After its UN veto, Russia accuses the West of “strangling” Pyongyang

by Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia called on Friday for a new major-power approach to North Korea, accusing the United States and its allies of “strangling” the Pyongyang regime and escalating tensions military in Southeast Asia.

Russia, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, vetoed on Thursday a draft resolution extending for one year the mandate of the committee of experts responsible for monitoring the application of UN sanctions against North Korea and its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

This coup effectively interrupted the surveillance system, triggering the anger of the United States and its allies who denounced an attack on global peace and security.

Read also…

Long supported by China, North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-un initiated a tactical rapprochement with Vladimir Putin thanks to the Ukrainian conflict, has been targeted by Security Council sanctions since 2006.

“It is obvious to us that the UN Security Council can no longer resort to old models when it comes to the problems of the Korean Peninsula,” said the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday. , Maria Zakharova.

“The United States and its allies have clearly demonstrated that their interest does not extend beyond a desire to ‘strange’ the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by any means possible, that a peaceful settlement is not not at all on the agenda,” she stressed.

For Moscow, the UN committee was neither objective nor impartial and was only a tool in the hands of the West and Pyongyang’s “geopolitical adversaries”.

North Korea, which declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear power, carried out its first nuclear test in 2006 and the sixth and last to date was in 2017, according to the United Nations.

The Security Council sanctions committee established by Resolution 1718 “has lost all the standards of objectivity and impartiality that should be inherent to this mandate”, said Maria Zakharova. “There is no point in keeping it as it is.”

“THE PATHS OF RELAXATION”

The Russian authorities, the spokesperson continued, are seeking a compromise under which sanctions would be revised over specific periods, a scenario already rejected by the White House.

“We call on the parties concerned to refrain from any measures leading to escalation and to ‘reconfigure’ themselves to find ways of detente, taking into account known security priorities,” she said.

Vladimir Putin, who compares the conflict in Ukraine to an “existential” battle against the West, intends to take advantage of his rapprochement with Kim Jong-un to confront Washington and its Asian allies while securing military resources.

The United States, which has intensified its military cooperation with Japan and South Korea in the face of the North Korean threat, accuses the North Korean regime of having supplied missiles to the Russian army, which the Kremlin and Pyongyang.

For Kim Jong-un, who called in 2023 to increase the production of military nuclear material and to produce more powerful weapons in the face of “confrontational maneuvers” by the United States and their Asian “vassals” on the Korean peninsula (the joint military maneuvers in the region), knows that it can find significant military and technological support in Russia.

Washington and Seoul have warned that any nuclear attack by North Korea would result in a military response and the “destruction” of the Pyongyang regime.

(Written by Guy Faulconbridge, French version Sophie Louet)