KYIV, Aug. 22 – Russia was actively working with selected foreign diplomats in Moscow in early June to accuse Ukraine of helping North Korea develop missile technology, a top Ukrainian security official said Tuesday.

Oleksandr Turchynov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said Ukrainian intelligence sources reported Russia’s efforts, and interpreted them as an attempt break a military alliance between Ukraine and the U.S.

The development shows Russia has been pitching the allegations two months before a story in The New York Times had publicly alleged that North Korea may have obtained its rocket engines from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday designated 10 entities and six individuals, including four Russians, in response to North Korea’s ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

OFAC designated Gefest-M LLC and its director, Russian national Ruben Kirakosyan, for support to the UN- and U.S.-designated Korea Tangun Trading Corporation, an entity involved in North Korea’s WMD and missile programs. Gefest-M, a company based in Moscow, has been involved in the procurement of metals for Korea Tangun Trading Corporation’s Moscow office.

The August 14 story in The New York Times, titled North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say, said Kyiv had aided North Korea in developing its nuclear weapons delivery system.

The allegations were based on a study by missile expert Michael Elleman published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

Elleman’s study said the rocket engines -- identified as RD-250s -- “likely” came to North Korea from Ukraine's Yuzhmash, a Russian transliteration of the company name, which is known as Pivdenmash in Ukrainian.

Turchynov said Elleman, who worked in Russia in 1995-2001, has family members that have “very close relations with key officials at Russian special services.”

“Elleman was cynically used by Russian special services as one of many links of Russia’s pre-established system for the dissemination of provocative information,” Turchynov said.

The National Security and Defense Council, after 5-day investigation, concluded that Ukraine had nothing to do with the North Korean missile technology.

The council has "unanimously come to the conclusion that Ukraine was not involved in the development of North Korea's ballistic-missiles program," Turchynov said.

It said Ukraine had stopped producing RD-250 rocket engines in 1991 and completely discontinued the production of this engine type in 1994.

The last batch of RD-250 rocket engines was exported to Russia before 2008, Turchynov said.

Thirty RD-250 rocket engines and 10 RD-262s (a modified version of the RD-250), manufactured in 1991, were exported to Russia between 1992 and 2008, Turchynov said in his report.

President Petro Poroshenko, commenting on the report, said he had instructed the Foreign Ministry to put together a group of experts and take the issue to the UN Security Council. (nr/ez)