KN-23 Missile: Russia Uses North Korean Missiles on Ukraine

Russia has struck at least one of Ukraine’s key energy facilities with North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles, President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on November 7, citing preliminary findings from examinations at the impact sites. The missiles formed part of a combined overnight attack that began on the evening of November 6, in which 36 missiles approached their targets on ballistic trajectories and only four were brought down. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that the salvo mixed Iskander-M, 3M22 Zircon, KN-23 and S-400 missiles launched from Russia’s Bryansk and Voronezh regions with 172 drones. An interception rate of roughly 11 percent highlights how severely the network has been thinned by a shortage of interceptors for its MIM-104 Patriot systems, the main assets Ukraine fields against ballistic targets.

Zelensky tied the low figure directly to that shortage, stating that the United States was best placed to close the gap and that Kiev was seeking at every level to accelerate deliveries. He described the use of North Korean missiles as further proof that global sanctions regimes needed significant strengthening. Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal reported that the country’s energy facilities had been hit 18 times in the preceding 24 hours, and Zelensky ordered backup public transport plans for the capital in case of prolonged outages. The KN-23 claim was made public as Ukraine continued to press its own long range drone campaign against Russian refineries.

The KN-23, designated Hwasong-11A in North Korea, is a solid fuelled road mobile missile with a range estimated at around 700 kilometres. It is designed to fly a flattened trajectory and manoeuvre in its terminal phase, which complicates interception considerably compared with older ballistic designs. Russia first fired the type at Ukraine in late December 2023 and early January 2024, with the White House disclosing the transfers on January 4, 2024. A United Nations panel of sanctions monitors later concluded that debris recovered in Kharkov after a strike on January 2, 2024 came from a Hwasong-11 series missile. Early batches were widely reported to have performed poorly, but Ukrainian intelligence officials stated in 2025 that their accuracy had improved significantly. On July 30, 2026 Zelensky reported the first use of a North Korean missile in roughly a year, in a strike that killed members of one family near Krivoy Rog.

North Korea has continued to develop the family at home, testing a Hwasong-11D variant fitted with a cluster warhead on October 31, only weeks after Kim Yo-jong threatened more strike weapons along the inter-Korean border. Combat use in Ukraine provides Pyongyang with performance data against Western air defences that no test range on the Korean Peninsula can replicate, since the Patriot is the same system South Korea and the United States field against the KN-23 family. Zelensky stated that Russia had intensified its strikes to build pressure on Ukraine’s position ahead of trilateral talks with Russian and U.S. delegations, which are scheduled to open in Abu Dhabi on November 10.