(SEOUL) North Korea on Sunday denied supplying arms to Moscow after Washington accused it of delivering rockets and missiles to the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, engaged in Ukraine.
Last week, White House Security Council spokesman John Kirby released US intelligence footage showing alleged Russian train cars returning from North Korea loaded with military equipment, including rockets for Wagner.
In the process, the United States designated Wagner as a “criminal organization” and declared to transmit these recordings to the UN as part of the sanctions aimed at Pyongyang.
On Sunday, a senior North Korean government official denounced “a stupid attempt to justify” future arms shipments to Ukraine by Washington, which on Thursday promised 31 Abrams tanks to Kyiv.
Quoted by the official KCNA news agency, the director general of the North Korean American Affairs Department, Kwon Jong Gun, dismissed this “rumor created from scratch” and warned the United States that they would expose themselves to a “truly undesirable result” if they continued to spread it.
“Trying to tarnish the image of (North Korea) by manufacturing something that does not exist is a serious provocation that can never be allowed and can only trigger a reaction,” he added.
On Friday, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, also criticized promises to send arms to Ukraine by the United States, accusing them of “going even further the Red line “.
Russia is, along with China, one of Pyongyang’s few international allies and has already helped the North Korean regime directly.
Apart from Syria and Russia, North Korea is the only country to have recognized the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk, two pro-Russian breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
Russia, which is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, has long argued against tougher international sanctions against North Korea and even called for them to be eased on humanitarian grounds.
Kim Jong-un declared in 2022 that he wanted his country to have the most powerful nuclear force in the world, describing in September as “irreversible” the status of nuclear power of the North.
Seoul and Washington lend Pyongyang the intention of carrying out a new nuclear test soon, which would be the seventh in its history and the first since 2017.