South Korea's intelligence service is conducting a review into suspicions that North Korea has provided Russia with artillery shells and other weaponry made in the 1970s, the country's National Intelligence Service (NIS) said on May 12.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) responded to a recent local media outlet's report that 122-millimeter (4.8-inch) artillery shells manufactured in North Korea in the 1970s appeared to be among the weapons that Russia used in its attacks against Ukraine.

Moscow’s forces captured five villages in a renewed ground assault in northeastern Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday, and Associated Press journalists in the city of Vovchansk described multiple buildings destroyed after Russian airstrikes and barrages of Grad rockets.