Russia is “actively working to undermine” international sanctions on North Korea, a top U.S. diplomat charged on Monday, calling the activities “systematic” and not “one-offs.”
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s allegation during a Monday session came amid a dispute over a report from an independent panel of U.N. experts. The original report, she said, chronicled sanctions violations by Russian entities that were edited from the public document at the behest of the Russian government. But that controversy is the culmination of other behind-the-scenes fights that have prevented international monitors from blacklisting violators of North Korea sanctions.
“Russian corruption is like a virus,” Haley said. “If we’re not careful, the sickness will make its way to the integrity and the effectiveness of the Security Council itself.”
She offered a number of charges in support of that warning, such as Russia’s failure to expel a North Korean weapons program financier or even to block his “access to his Moscow bank account.” In another case, Haley said, Russia agreed to UNSC sanctions for North Korea’s use of a chemical weapon to assassinate dictator Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, but then “blocked the sanctions committee from updating its 12-year-old sanctions list.” More broadly, Russia has prevented the U.N. from punishing illicit ship-to-shop transfers of oil to North Korean tankers, even when the shop “was captured on film” engaged in the smuggling.
“Step-by-step, sanction-by-sanction, and time and time again, Russia is working across the board to undermine the sanctions regime,” she said. “Every time the Security Council overlooks sanctions violations, every time we allow the Russians to bury evidence of violations, we remove incentives for Pyongyang to end its nuclear program.”
Haley’s Russian counterpart accused her of “disseminating lies” to the council, particularly with respect to the ship she cited, which he said had not violated sanctions, and the matter of the edited report. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia maintained that Russia’s alleged interference with the report consisted only of replying to false accusations.
“[The panel of experts] became ultimately the hostages of the political vision of Washington,” he said. “In this regard, we and other members of the committee expressed a number of comments which were viewed correctly by the experts and then taken on board when they transferred the report to the council.”
Haley maintained that Russia wants to weaken the international sanctions for its own economic reasons. In particular, eastern Russia’s coal industry relies on access to a North Korean port to sell the product abroad.
“Russia planned on asking the Security Council to begin to remove sanctions on North Korea so it could renew a project for it’s own economic benefit,” she said, referring to a railway project pertinent to Russian-North Korean coal industry work. “Either it wants sanctions to succeed, or it doesn’t. Either it wants to deprive the Pyongyang government of the means to finance its illegal nuclear weapons system, or it doesn’t. Unfortunately, I think we know the answers to these questions. Either way, the Security Council can no longer be indifferent to Russia’s actions.”
[Opinion: Sanctions only work when enforced: US late to pressure Russian companies supplying North Korea]
