Russia gives North Korea million barrels of oil, breaking sanctions, Report

Satellite imagery analysis by the UK-based Open Source Centre indicates that Russia has reportedly supplied North Korea with over one million barrels of oil since March 2024.

This oil is believed to be part of a broader deal where North Korea provides weapons and troops to Russia in exchange for fuel, which experts and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy have suggested supports Russia’s military efforts in Ukraine.

These transfers breach United Nations sanctions, which restrict oil sales to North Korea to small amounts in an effort to curb its economy and prevent the development of nuclear weapons.

Satellite images shared with the BBC reveal that North Korean oil tankers made 43 trips to an oil terminal in Russia’s Far East over the past eight months. Some images show tankers arriving empty and departing nearly full, indicating oil transfers.

North Korea, the only nation banned from purchasing oil on the open market, has an annual United Nations-imposed limit of 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum—far below its actual needs.

The first recorded oil transfer occurred on March 7, 2024, about seven months after reports of North Korea supplying weapons to Russia.

Oil shipments have continued, with the latest transfer documented on November 5, 2024, amid reports of North Korean troops being sent to fight in Ukraine.

Russia’s foreign ministry has not yet responded to requests for comment on these transfers.

“While Kim Jong Un is providing Vladimir Putin with a lifeline to continue his war, Russia is quietly providing North Korea with a lifeline of its own,” says Joe Byrne from the Open Source Centre.

“This steady flow of oil gives North Korea a level of stability it hasn’t had since these sanctions were introduced.”

Four former members of a UN panel responsible for tracking the sanctions on North Korea have told the BBC the transfers are a consequence of increasing ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.

“These transfers are fuelling Putin’s war machine – this is oil for missiles, oil for artillery and now oil for soldiers,” says Hugh Griffiths, who led the panel from 2014 to 2019.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has told the BBC in a statement: “To keep fighting in Ukraine, Russia has become increasingly reliant on North Korea for troops and weapons in exchange for oil.”

He added that this was “having a direct impact on security in the Korean peninsula, Europe and Indo-Pacific”.

While most of North Korea’s population relies on coal for their daily needs, oil is critical for the country’s military operations. Diesel and petrol are used to move missile launchers and troops, power munitions factories, and fuel the vehicles of Pyongyang’s elite.

The 500,000 barrels North Korea is allowed to receive under UN sanctions fall far short of the nine million barrels the country consumes annually. As a result, since the cap was introduced in 2017, North Korea has been forced to obtain oil illicitly from criminal networks to cover the shortfall.

This process typically involves transferring oil between ships at sea—a dangerous, costly, and time-consuming operation, according to Dr. Go Myong-hyun, a senior research fellow at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy, which is affiliated with the country’s intelligence agency.

“Now Kim Jong Un is getting oil directly, it’s likely better quality, and chances are he’s getting it for free, as quid pro quo for supplying munitions. What could be better than that?”

“A million barrels is nothing for a large oil producer like Russia to release, but it is a substantial amount for North Korea to receive,” Dr Go adds.

In all 43 journeys tracked by the Open Source Centre using satellite imagery, the North Korean-flagged tankers arrived at Russia’s Vostochny Port with their trackers turned off, masking their movements.

The images reveal that after unloading, the tankers then returned to one of four ports on North Korea’s east and west coasts.

“The vessels appear silently, almost every week,” says Joe Byrne, the researcher from the Open Source Centre. “Since March there’s been a fairly constant flow.”

The team, which has been tracking these tankers since the oil sanctions were first introduced, used their knowledge of each ship’s capacity to calculate how many oil barrels they could carry.

Then they studied images of the ships entering and leaving Vostochny and, in most instances, could see how low they sat in the water and, therefore, how full they were.

The tankers, they assess, were loaded to 90% of their capacity.

“We can see from some of the images that if the ships were any fuller they would sink,” Mr Byrne says.

Since March, it is estimated that Russia has supplied North Korea with over a million barrels of oil—more than double the annual cap and approximately ten times the amount Moscow officially provided Pyongyang in 2023.

This follows an assessment by the US government in May, which indicated that Moscow had already delivered over 500,000 barrels of oil.

Due to cloud cover, researchers are unable to capture clear images of the port on a daily basis.

“The whole of August was cloudy, so we weren’t able to document a single trip,” Mr Byrne says, leading his team to believe that one million barrels is a “baseline” figure.

These oil deliveries not only violate UN sanctions on North Korea, which Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, had endorsed, but also involve vessels that have been individually sanctioned by the UN in more than half of the tracked journeys by the Open Source Centre.

As a result, these vessels should have been seized upon entering Russian waters.

However, in March 2024, just three weeks after the first documented oil transfer, Russia used its veto power at the UN Security Council to disband the panel responsible for monitoring sanctions violations.

Ashley Hess, a former member of the panel before its dissolution, states that they had already gathered evidence of the transfers beginning.

“We were tracking some of the ships and companies involved, but our work was stopped, possibly after they had already breached the 500,000-barrel cap”.

Eric Penton-Voak, who led the group from 2021-2023, says the Russian members on the panel tried to censor its work.

“Now the panel is gone, they can simply ignore the rules,” he adds. “The fact that Russia is now encouraging these ships to visit its ports and load up with oil shows a new level of contempt for these sanctions.”

But Mr Penton-Voak, who is on the board of the Open Source Centre, thinks the problem runs much deeper.

“You now have these autocratic regimes increasingly working together to help one another achieve whatever it is they want, and ignoring the wishes of the international community.”

This is an “increasingly dangerous” playbook, he argues.

“The last thing you want is a North Korean tactical nuclear weapon turning up in Iran, for instance.”

As Kim Jong Un increases his support for Vladimir Putin’s war, concerns are rising about what additional assistance he may receive in return.

The US and South Korea estimate that Pyongyang has already sent Moscow 16,000 shipping containers filled with artillery shells and rockets, while remnants of North Korean ballistic missiles have been found on the battlefield in Ukraine.

More recently, Putin and Kim signed a defense pact, which resulted in thousands of North Korean troops being deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where intelligence reports suggest they are now involved in combat.

The South Korean government has told the BBC that it will “sternly respond to the violation of UN Security Council resolutions by Russia and North Korea.”

Its primary concern is that Moscow may provide Pyongyang with technology to enhance its spy satellites and ballistic missiles.

Last month, South Korea’s defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, noted that there is a “high chance” North Korea is seeking such assistance.

“If you’re sending your people to die in a foreign war, a million barrels of oil is just not sufficient reward,” Dr Go says.

Andrei Lankov, an expert in North Korea-Russia relations at Seoul’s Kookmin University, agrees.

“I used to think it was not in Russia’s interest to share military technology, but perhaps its calculus has changed. The Russians need these troops, and this gives the North Koreans more leverage.”