Most of what you say is a Ukrainian claim. Reports from the West. These are more like part of the fog of war. In the absence of confirmation from the Russians. It is not easy to assume that their shells are of poor quality. After all, North Korea's artillery technology may be stuck in the 1970s. But for war. Quantity is far more important than quality.No, NK gave those shells from their stockpile and Russia lost a lot of barrels due to their quality or rathert lack thereof. The more shells North Korea gives Russia, the better for Ukraine.
Low-quality shells supplied to Russia by North Korea are injuring its own troops and damaging artillery, Ukraine says
Ukraine claims poor-quality North Korean-supplied shells are injuring Russian soldiers and damaging gun barrels.www.businessinsider.com
General Staff: Russia using low-quality, defective North Korean shells
In particular, the General Staff said that this appeared to be happening with Russian troops in the Dnipro Group under the command of Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, operating in the south of Ukraine.news.yahoo.com
Russian soldiers complain that North Korean ammo is causing weapons to explode
Vladimir Putin has bought over a million artillery shells and other munitions to use in Ukraine.www.express.co.uk
Russia Needs Fresh Artillery Barrels, Bad. It’s Yanking Them Off Old Guns By The Thousand.
Thanks to a batch of shells from North Korea, Russian forces in Ukraine are flush with artillery ammunition. What gunners don’t have in abundance are howitzer barrels.www.forbes.com
Basically non-western countries don't manage the shelf-lives of their munitions very well, and keep them well past the safe to use date.
Ukraine - Russia Conflict
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There are pictures of ruptured Russian barrels on twitter. If the shells were made in 1970 too, that's the problem. Quantity is not better than quality if 1 in every hundred shells writes off an SPH or tank. Whereas 100 Excalibur or Vulcano rounds is 100 dead enemy SPHs or tanks, 100 DPRK shells is maybe 1 hit, 98 misses and an own goal. Clearly 50k of the former is better than 1 million of the latter.
The shells supplied to Ukraine are Franco-British-Swedish and are called BONUS, we don't talk about them because for the moment we have supplied small quantities but the CESARs can fire Excaliburs. For the quantities I gave you the forecasts here:
Ukraine - Russia Conflict
From an artillery point of view, Ukraine uses 4 times fewer shells than Russia, so it's normal that it should alert us to its shortage, but Russia's stockpiles are slowly being used up and even though production is currently higher in Russia and in the countries that help it, production in the countries that help Ukraine should surpass this production by 2025.
And I didn't say that Romania was supplying 40% of Ukraine's shells, but Bulgaria: the South Korean shells are a recent announcement that hasn't yet materialised and it's just a one-off, whereas Bulgaria is an uninterrupted process.
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There are obvious problems with the graphs you've given. First, there's a 2S7 howitzer inside. And a T12 anti-tank gun. North Korea has not been equipped with either type of artillery. They don't have the ability to produce their shells. It was already November when North Korea delivered artillery. You have these pictures. It was all taken in the spring and summer.
DPRK produces both 152mm and 203mm shells.
Not all the pictures were taken in summer, look at the trees in the background. Russia also has problems with old shells and barrel wear too.
North Korea does not have a 203mm gun. It generally uses 152mm, 170mm, and 130mm artillery as its subordinate artillery. North Korea's D20 artillery was not even imported from the Soviet Union, but from Romania. Currently, North Korea's main artillery is also 155mm. The 170mm is a Gushan cannon designed by North Korea, and your first picture shows the 2S19 cannon, which uses the 2A65 cannon. The D20 shell made by North Korea cannot be used with the 2A65 cannon
The one in the original picture might not even be a 203mm, or it might have happened due to bad Russian ammo. But there have been soldiers complaining about NK ammunition.
Russian soldiers complain that North Korean ammunition is causing weapons to 'explode'
Major Patrick Hinton, an artillery officer in the British army, said that questions remained about the quality of the munitions being supplied by Pyongyang. Major Hinton said poorly made ammunition would have an “inconsistent performance”, but given the very large numbers involved, a lack of...
rusi.org
Russian soldiers complain that North Korean ammo is causing weapons to explode
Vladimir Putin has bought over a million artillery shells and other munitions to use in Ukraine.
It's about 8k/day (recently it surpassed the Russian rate of fire). So roughly 3m/year. US is producing 100k/month, so that totals 2.5m with the EU's 1.3m. Add in the UK, Norway (not formally EU) and the odd helping from ROK, Japan, Turkey, Canada, Australia, even Pakistan and Ukraine's own production, that should make up the remaining 500k. The UK produced 300k shells for Ukraine since the start of the war, and there are plans for an 8-fold increase.
Russia has burnt through its stockpile and is desperate. Hence why they're reaching out to turd party nations for help. But part of the problem is that they're losing howitzers and MLRS faster than Ukraine due to guided rounds.
Russia also lacks the ability to perform strikes like this:
HIMARS missile strike reportedly hit gathering of Russian FPV drones operators Ilovais'k,Donetsk Oblast - Ukraine Interactive map - Ukraine Latest news on live map - liveuamap.com
HIMARS missile strike reportedly hit gathering of Russian FPV drones operators. Live Universal Awareness Map Liveuamap is a leading independent global news and information site dedicated to factual reporting of a variety of important topics including conflicts, human rights issues, protests...
liveuamap.com
HIMARS missile strike reportedly hit gathering of Russian FPV drones operators
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