The Donated War Is Over

Between August 2023 and December 2025, North Korea earned somewhere between $7.67 billion and $14.4 billion from its military support for Russia's war. Between 80 and 96 percent of that compensation did not arrive as cash. It arrived, according to South Korean analysts, as something harder to track.

It is highly likely that the majority (80-96%) of the payments for troop deployment and military supplies exports have been, or will be, received in the form of sensitive military technology or related precision parts and materials that are difficult to observe by satellite. — Lim Soo-ho

The Russia-North Korea relationship is not a one-way munitions pipeline. It is a technology swap — missiles and troops in exchange for ICBM know-how, including, South Korea's Joint Chiefs chairman has testified, technical assistance for Pyongyang's Hwasong-20, which the regime calls its "most powerful nuclear strategic weapon system" ^[1][2]. Ukraine is pursuing the same model from the other side. Kyiv has proposed sharing its low-cost interceptor drone technology with Washington in exchange for licenses to produce Patriot PAC-3 missiles.

Licenses for the production of our missiles are being perceived positively by the American side for the first time. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Trump granted the license in July, though the State Department must still vet which components are transferable, and full production is at least a year away ^[3]. Meanwhile, the European Parliament voted 457-148 to integrate Ukraine's defense industry into the EU through a 1.5 billion euro program that requires 65 percent EU-origin components ^[4].

Ukraine’s defense industry “needs us,” — Andrius Kubilius

Nobody is donating anymore. Both sides are swapping technology to build permanent production capacity. And the reason is that the donated-stockpile model exhausted itself on all sides at once. Three failures, each a different kind of depletion, made the old model impossible. The first was on the supply side. North Korean artillery shell deliveries to Russia dropped by more than half in 2025 compared to the previous year, with September recording zero deliveries — Pyongyang had simply run through its stockpiles ^[5]. The second was on the donor side. The five-month US-Iran war depleted American interceptor reserves to as little as a quarter of necessary levels in some cases, forcing the administration to use emergency authority to push through $16 billion in arms sales to the Middle East and making support for Ukraine, in the Pentagon's own language, "less predictable" ^[6].

Last Thursday, almost three weeks into this war against Iran, the Administration pushed through more than 16 billion dollars in arms sales to the Middle East… using emergency authority to bypass normal Congressional review. — Jeanne Shaheen

The third was on the battlefield. In the August 5 assault on Kyiv — today — Russia fired 28 missiles at the capital. Ukraine intercepted 98 of 115 drones but shot down zero of the 28 missiles. Seventeen people were killed, 44 injured ^[7]. Zelensky attributed the casualties directly to the interceptor shortage.

It is very important that partners realize that delays in their delivery or unwillingness to transfer anti-ballistic capability leads precisely to such terrible casualties and destruction. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The donated-stockpile model died in those three failures. What is rising in its place is permanent. Ukraine's Fire Point startup has already built a domestically developed ballistic missile, the FP-9, with an estimated range of 850 kilometers. The company's chief designer was unambiguous about the intended target.

I expect that this summer, or at the latest in early autumn, we will begin test flights toward Moscow. — Denys Shtilerman

Russia claims to have intercepted one near Moscow on July 2 ^[8]. Fire Point now sources components from Germany, Sweden, France, and Norway, part of a broader relocation of Ukrainian defense manufacturing into NATO supply chains: drones built in Germany by Quantum Systems, howitzers produced in Poland, NATO command standards adopted across the force ^[9]. On the American side, the response to depleted stockpiles has been the $3 billion "Arsenal of Freedom" initiative, signed August 3 with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, designed to triple PAC-3 MSE interceptor production and quadruple THAAD output by 2027 ^[10].

Building the Arsenal of Freedom requires robust, dynamic supply chains at every level of the industrial base. — Michael Duffey

On the other side, the same logic is unfolding. North Korea has now deployed a dedicated missile unit of roughly 90 personnel to Russia's Voronezh region, integrated into Russia's 112th Missile Brigade with six launchers and 120 ballistic missiles — a permanent institutional presence on Russian soil, not a one-time shipment ^[11]. Russia itself has reoriented its economy around military production, with defense spending at roughly 8 percent of GDP and the civilian sector contracting under inflation and tax increases ^[12]. The industrial competition is now built into factories and supply contracts on both sides. It will not end when the shooting stops. Whether it can be sustained is a different question — and the answer is uncertain on both sides. Russia's war economy is running a budget deficit of 3.4 trillion rubles ^[13]. Moscow's defense industry depends on 1,454 pieces of foreign industrial equipment from 181 enterprises — Czech waterjet systems, American CNC milling machines, Chinese injection molding machines — acquired through leasing schemes designed to obscure end users and bypass sanctions ^[14].

Weapons Russia is using against Ukraine today may be used tomorrow against other states. — Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

The strain is beginning to show. Estonia's intelligence chief issued a warning this year.

All of the security and intelligence services in Russia are helping out on the state’s efforts to get this — Christoffer Wedelin

But Ukraine's side faces its own fragility, and it is not merely a matter of time. The Patriot production license Trump granted in July remains conditional: the State Department must still determine which components can be transferred without risking leakage to Russia or China, and NATO ambassador Whitaker has made the timeline explicit ^[3].

It does not appear feasible to finalize long-term production agreements before this winter. — Matthew Whitaker

Even once approved, full production will take at least a year — the specialized infrastructure for radar systems and solid rocket motors cannot be stood up overnight ^[3]. The EDIP's 65 percent EU-origin requirement means Ukraine's defense industry must reorient its supply chains toward European suppliers, a process measured in years, not months ^[4]. The license exists on paper. The missiles do not. The capacity being built on both sides will outlast the war. The question neither side can yet answer is whether the economies beneath that capacity will outlast the effort of building it.