KYIV, Aug. 14 - Russia may have secretly supplied rocket engines to North Korea helping the country improve its missile technology to challenge the U.S., Ukrainian security officials and lawmakers said Monday.

Iryna Friz, a senior lawmaker and ally of President Petro Poroshenko, responded to a story in The New York Times alleging that Ukrainian engines have been used in the North Korean rockets.

“Russia had been receiving parts and missile components from Ukrainian company through 2014,” Friz told Interfax-Ukraine. “Violation of the conditions of export control by the Russian Federation and the transfer of technologies to the DPRK testifies to the need to introduce a full embargo on the import and export of Russian weapons.”

Oleksandr Turchynov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, a top security body under President Poroshenko, denied any involvement by the Ukrainian missile company PivdenMash in North Korea. He said the story was a coverup for the Russian intelligence operation.

"This information is not based on any grounds, is provocative in content, and most likely planted by Russian special services to cover up their own crimes," Turchynov said, adding that Ukraine stopped any supplies of weapons to Russia in 2014, after Moscow had launched its aggressive war against Ukraine.

He said Russia has been increasingly turning into a "totalitarian, dangerous and unpredictable” regime that is similar to North Korea.

Russia has a long history of cheating on international community over weapons and misleading and breaching international sanctions regimes. The U.S. has recently accused Russia of violating the treaty on reduction of medium range nuclear missiles.

Russia also recently broke international sanctions by misleading the German power machinery manufacturer Seimens into selling two power generating turbines to a Russian company, which it had later illegally shipped to Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in March 2014. The European Union responded with tougher sanctions on Russia after the illegal transactions had been uncovered earlier this year.

The successful test launches North Korea has carried out in recent months that have prompted fiery rhetoric from President Donald Trump have also surprised experts. The country has been making rapid progress in developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Now, a new analysis by an American missile expert, first reported by The New York Times on Monday, says it has identified the engines that are powering these recent missile tests as a type produced by a company in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Michael Elleman, a senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The New York Times he believed that the engines had likely been acquired illegally from workers from Yuzhmash, which is a Russian transliteration for the Ukrainian company known as PivdenMash.

Dmytro Zolotukhin, a deputy Ukrainian information minister, said Elleman worked closely with the Russians as the leader of the Russian arms reduction program in 1995-2001.

“What’s interesting is that the story is based on comments from one expert who led the Russian arms reduction project in 1995-2001,” Zolotukhin said. “It’s quite a coincidence that most Western experts who criticize Ukraine have been this way or another linked to Russia.” (nr/ez)