North Korea has significantly reduced its shipments of artillery shells to Russia in 2025, as domestic stockpiles show signs of exhaustion, and the quality of munitions deteriorates. According to Ukraine’s military intelligence, Pyongyang has sent more than 6.5mn shells since 2023, but the volume has fallen by more than half this year, Ukrainska Pravda reported on November 15.

Previously, estimates suggest that North Korean ammunition made up to half of Russia's artillery supply in Ukraine –millions of shells a year. However, Vadym Skibitskyi, Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence, told Reuters that while North Korean ammunition played a key role in sustaining Russia’s high-intensity shelling throughout 2024, deliveries have sharply declined.

“Their reserves have run out,” he said, adding that no deliveries were recorded in September, and only limited shipments were detected in October.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea in June 2024 and signed off on security deals to boost military ties. North Korea still possesses some of the largest global stock of artillery shells that can be used in Soviet-era systems and as bne IntelliNews reported its supplies in the early part of the war gave Russia a decisive advantage in the artillery duel with Ukraine. Russia was able to fire between five- and ten-times the number of shells to each one of Ukraine’s.

The war in Ukraine has been a boon for the impoverished hermit kingdom, which is making billions from arms sales and is believed to be receiving badly needed food, fuel and crucial Russian technology in return that is in turn destabilising the security situation in SE Asia.

North Korea has bailed Russia out, giving the Kremlin time to build up its own domestic production. Putin put the entire Russian economy onto a war footing early in the war and, according to reports, Russia went into surplus military production this year, making more arms than it needs to perpetrate the war in Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute that tracks Russia’s arms production. All the main arms categories – tanks, military vehicles, artillery shells, and drones – have seen production increase by 200% or more since the war began in 2022.

Quantity and quality both down

Russian soldiers have complained that the quality of North Korean shells is substandard and contain a lot of duds, but more recently the quality of shells has fallen further as Pyongyang starts to scrap the bottom of the barrel. The imported shells now require refurbishment in Russian factories before they can be used on the battlefield.

Earlier assessments by Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (UFIS) in October estimated that North Korea was supplying between 35% and 50% of Russia’s artillery ammunition during peak delivery periods. The decline in shell shipments could now present logistical challenges for Russian forces, which remain engaged in artillery-heavy combat across eastern and southern Ukraine.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has seized on Moscow’s dependence on Pyongan to extend and deepen his defences and has also launched domestic drone production, with Russian help. Pyongan is now producing both small first-person-view (FPV) drones and medium-range UAVs for battlefield use, which will further destabilise the peninsula.

Skibitskyi did not disclose the scale of production but said the effort reflects Pyongyang’s growing interest in absorbing battlefield lessons from Ukraine for its own military-industrial development. North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons has already made it invulnerable to attack by South Korea or the West, but the Ukraine war has taught that an extensive drone fleet also makes invasion by conventional forces, even in overwhelming numbers, extremely difficult to do.

Ukraine is hoping to follow through on Russia’s supply problems and since the summer has launched a sustained drone attack campaign targeting Russia’s logistics chains, supply nodes, fuel depots, and transport infrastructure. While China and Iran have also provided material support to varying degrees, North Korea’s role has been uniquely significant in terms of the raw volume of artillery shells.

Russia remains ahead of Nato members in artillery shell production, but thanks to belated investment, the Western allies are closing the gap and in a better position to supply Ukraine. Russia produced around 2 to 2.3mn artillery rounds in 2024 but that reportedly rose to 250,000 rounds per month this year to a total of 7mn shells for the full year. Nato is lagging, with 2mn shells this year and targets 267,000 rounds per month by 2026.

"Until recently, Russia was producing more ammunition than all Nato Allies put together. But not anymore," Nato General Secretary Mark Rutte said at the Nato-Industry Forum in the Romanian capital on November 7, without specifying which weapons systems he was referring to.

Rutte urged Nato members and their defence industries to "outgun, outproduce, and outsmart those that seek to harm or diminish us."

He credited the shift to an expansion of defence production capacity across the alliance after years of European governments’ refusal to sign the defence sector procurement contracts needed for privately-owned defence companies to make the investments to expand production.

"Across the Alliance, we are now opening dozens of new production lines and expanding existing ones. We are making more than we have done in decades," he said, urging defence industries to "step up supply, expand existing production lines, and open new ones."

Western intelligence agencies are likely to closely monitor whether Pyongyang ramps up shell production again, or if Russia seeks to replenish its ammunition stocks through other channels. For now, Ukraine’s military command believes the reduction in North Korean artillery supplies may begin to constrain Russian firepower in some sectors.