WASHINGTON, Dec 22 – The White House said Thursday that the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, has taken delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster its forces as it fights side-by-side with Russian troops in Ukraine.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said U.S. intelligence officials determined that North Korea completed an initial arms shipment that included rockets and missiles last month, The Associated Press reported.

“We assess that the amount of material delivered to Wagner will not change battlefield dynamics in Ukraine,” Kirby said. “But we’re certainly concerned that North Korea is planning to deliver more military equipment.”

On Friday, North Korea again flatly denied it has shipped munitions to Russia, calling the U.S. accusation of arms transfers to Russia “the groundless theory” cooked up by “some dishonest forces.”

The White House has expressed alarm about Wagner’s growing involvement in the war as it has been particularly active in the eastern Donbas region. Kirby said in certain instances Russian military officials have even been “subordinate to Wagner’s command.”

Biden administration officials said with the arms sales to the private military group, North Korea is violating U.N. sanctions that ban Pyongyang from importing or exporting weapons.
Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, called it “despicable” that Russia, a permanent veto-wielding member of the
U.N. Security Council, which imposed the sanctions, is now using weapons procured from North Korea and Iran “to pursue its war of aggression against Ukraine.”

An unidentified spokesman at the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media that the nation “remains unchanged in its principled stand on the issue of ‘arms transaction’ between (North Korea) and Russia which has never happened.”

The spokesman didn’t mention Thursday’s U.S. assessment that North Korea sent an arms shipment to the Wagner Group. But he accused the U.S. of “criminal acts of bringing bloodshed and destruction to Ukraine” by providing it with a large amount of weapons, while repeating its support of Russia in the war.

Kirby said the U.S. now assesses that Wagner has some 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts that the company has recruited from prisons.

The U.S. assesses that Wagner, owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is spending about $100 million a month in the fight, Kirby said.

Wagner Group mercenaries have also been accused by Western countries and UN experts of numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced he had de signated the Wagner Group as an “entity of particular concern” for its activities in the Central African Republic. (ap/ez)