16 Aug 2017 13:34

Moscow has no info that Pyongyang acquired missile technologies from Ukrainian territory - Rogozin

MOSCOW. Aug 16 (Interfax) - Russia does not have irrefutable proof that North Korea acquired missile technologies from Ukrainian territory, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who supervises the defense sector, told the Rossiya 24 channel (VGTRK) in an interview.

"So far, I personally do not have any information that such a leak could have happened and that we have irrefutable proof of this," Rogozin said.

"This is a very dangerous situation. If this is true, Ukraine might have flagrantly breached every international restriction on the delivery of missile technologies," he said.

"It was either a document leak or an outright transfer of the engines. Of course, they could have hardly done without specialists organizing production on the ground," Rogozin said.

"Our Ukrainian colleague's explanations that North Koreans might have acquired copies of engines built by Yuzhnoye Design Bureau sound very strange. We are familiar with those engines. In the past, they were installed on product 36, the so-called Voyevoda (intercontinental ballistic missile)," Rogozin said.

These are engines designed by Russia's NPO Energomash and built by Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in Dnipro, Ukraine, he said.

"What does a copy of an engine mean? I can tell those who do not understand this story [...] that one may make a copy of a still life," the deputy prime minister said.

"An engine is a high tech product. It requires both technical documentation, which needs to be extremely detailed, burn stands and specialists who have developed motor skills of their fingers, hands to make those engines. Such engines cannot be simply copied, made with a 3D printer, and build for someone else's program without the manufacturer's goodwill," Rogozin said.

The New York Times reported on August 14 citing conclusions by a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies that the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile launched by the DPRK in July may have been powered by an engine designed on the basis of the RD-250, which was developed for Soviet ICBMs in the 1960s.

The report names the state-owned Yuzhmash machine-building plant, which The New York Times describes as "one of Russia's primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence," as the most likely supplier of technology for building the North Korean missile's engine.

Yuzhmash dismissed the allegations aired by The New York Times and described them as an attempt to discredit Yuzhmash and Ukraine.