Two large foreign planes appeared again at Pyongyang International Airport on Monday, according to NK Pro analysis of satellite imagery, the second such visit in the last week.

The flights come as Russian military aircraft have made dozens of secret missions to North Korea in the last two years amid extensive military cooperation over the war in Ukraine, including Pyongyang’s missile transfers and troop deployments. 

Russia has also delivered the bodies of dead North Korean soldiers to the Pyongyang airport, without disclosing dates or aircraft involved, leaving open the possibility that repatriations are ongoing.

Just like the previous instance on Aug. 7, major aviation tracking services did not pick up the flights early Monday inside DPRK airspace. 

NK Pro has identified two Russian Il-76 military cargo planes, including one sanctioned by Washington last year for alleged involvement in North Korean missile transfers, that flew between Moscow and the Russian Far East early on Aug. 11.

The timing of these flights as tracked by Flightradar24 line up with two foreign planes matching Il-76 dimensions (around 47 meters long with a 50-meter wingspan) appearing in a Planet Labs satellite image of the Pyongyang airport taken on Aug. 11 just before noon KST, though it is not confirmed that these are the same Russian planes. 

They arrived sometime in the prior 24 hours, as the place where they were parked to the north of the Pyongyang airport terminal was empty in an image taken at noon on Aug. 10. They also were gone from the next image taken just before noon on Aug. 12.

NK Pro has confirmed that the two planes are not part of national carrier Air Koryo’s known fleet of 18 aircraft, since their size as measured in the Planet Labs image is different from the only three large Air Koryo planes that can’t be accounted for during that time.

SUSPECT AIRCRAFT

One of the Russian military planes seen heading toward North Korea from Moscow on Monday morning was an Il-76MD with tail number RA-78817. The U.S. accused the Russian 224th Flight Unit State Airlines in a Jan. 2024 sanctions designation of using the aircraft for “transfers of DPRK ballistic missiles and missile-related cargo transfers in late November 2023.”

This plane disappeared north of Khabarovsk at 9:23 a.m. KST on Monday, according to Flightradar24. If the location was accurate, the plane could have landed at Pyongyang just over two hours later based on historical flight times for similar aircraft, meaning it would arrived around 30 minutes prior to the satellite image showing it parked.

The other suspect aircraft identified by NK Pro, an Il-76MD-90A with tail number RF-78664, disappeared north of Novosibirsk just before 1 a.m. KST the same day, leaving ample time to arrive in Pyongyang before the image was taken around noon.

It appeared on a similar route disappearing north of Khabarovsk on Aug. 3 and Aug. 7 KSTas well, departing from Russia’s Orenburg-2 airbase in the former instance and from Novosibirsk in the latter. Flightradar24 data shows this plane also flew down Russia’s east coast toward Vladivostok and the DPRK border on July 30.

In between the sightings of the unidentified large planes this week, a smaller Russian military passenger jet made a quick stop in Pyongyang on the morning of Aug. 8.

Neither side has disclosed any information about this confirmed Russian flight or any of the apparent cargo plane flights to Pyongyang.

It also remains possible that the unidentified planes are new North Korean acquisitions, but the satellite imagery evidence alone does not yet support this conclusion.

Besides at least five Russian Il-76 cargo planes flying to Pyongyang during Vladimir Putin’s visit in June 2024, confirmed flights to North Korea by such aircraft have been few and far between. 

Examples include an Il-76 linked to weapons trade and a larger An-124 operated by the sanctioned 224th Flight Unit, both in March 2024.

Washington and Kyiv have accused Moscow and Pyongyang of using several other Russian cargo planes to transfer troops and weapons between the two countries, though in many cases without specifying whether the planes conducted these activities inside North Korea or the Russian Far East.

Edited by Alannah Hill