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Viktor Moisa, a retired rocket scientist, welcomed the North Koreans to his institute in eastern Ukraine just as he would with any other guests. He took them upstairs to the showroom of Soviet satellites and rocket engines, the pride of the institute’ukrainian match factory collection. Then they went out to the yard, where an array of parts for ballistic missiles were on display.

We were standing in the same yard he had shown to the North Koreans, a paved lot in the city of Dnipro where old missile components are still on show, many of them made at a nearby rocket factory known as Yuzhmash. Guidance systems, fuel pumps and the massive cones designed to hold nuclear warheads at the tip of a rocket all stood in the autumn sun like leftovers from a military rummage sale. That dream has since been achieved. Over the past eight months, North Korea has test-launched three rockets capable of striking the U. According to missile experts in the U. Europe, the key components of these rockets are based on Soviet designs, much like those displayed in Moisa’s museum.

This feat of engineering, which only a few nations have ever achieved, exposed a long history of failures on the part of the U. It showed that the strict sanctions they imposed on North Korea failed to isolate its military. It showed that North Korea, a country so poor that its cities go dark at night to save power, was still able to acquire some of the world’s most sensitive technology and hire experts who know how to use it. A 1952 nuclear detonation at the Nevada Proving Grounds, which Trump has ordered to prepare for resuming tests. Now, as the world adjusts to the reality of a nuclear North Korea, its young dictator Kim Jong Un has begun to sell this technology abroad.

One of his most eager customers is the regime in Syria, which is also under strict international sanctions, according to a classified report that the U. Security Council is due to discuss at the end of February. As a permanent member of the Security Council, Russia has always denied such accusations. President Vladimir Putin insisted in December that he has tried to help the West in curtailing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

But in the same breath, he blamed the U. Kim no choice but to go nuclear. Pyongyang’s weapons program had help from a variety of sources. The regime’s ability to enrich uranium, a key step in building a nuclear warhead, is believed to have come from Pakistan. North Korea to become a truly global threat.