South Korea has identified “a probability” that Russia will help North Korea enhance its nuclear weapons program in the course of the burgeoning partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang.
“Russia’s use of the DPRK’s weapons are direct violations of multiple Security Council resolutions,” South Korean Ambassador Hwang Joon-kook said at a U.N. Security Council forum in New York on Monday. “What is more problematic for us is a probability that [the] DPRK may receive, in return from Russia, something important for its military capabilities — in particular, nuclear and missile-related technologies.”
The South Korean envoy’s statement confronted Russia with a misgiving that has festered in the months since Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a Russian spaceport in September. Russia called the Security Council meeting to complain about Western military aid for Ukraine, but Putin’s dealmaking with Kim galvanized Indo-Pacific criticism of Moscow.
“Russia [is] ruthlessly using its own weapons, including those obtained from North Korea, against Ukraine by violating Security Council resolutions, on top of its aggression violating the U.N. Charter in the first place,” Ambassador Mitsuko Shino, the deputy representative of Japan to the United Nations in New York, told the council. “Russia has killed so many civilians and then calls for peace without hesitation. Given the countless number of victims and injuries, no reasonable person can be convinced by its words. Accountability remains of the utmost importance.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who traveled to New York to address the meeting in person, insisted that Russians and Ukrainians “are still linked by brotherly ties,” which he claimed have been strained only by Western manipulation of the Ukrainian people. He dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposed peace formula as a “road to nowhere” and warned Western powers against backing those principles.
“The sooner Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels realize this, the better it will be for both Ukraine and the West, to whom the ‘crusade’ against Russia has already created obvious, reputational, and existential risks,” Lavrov said. “I advise you to listen to this carefully while there is still time.”
That remark builds on a series of recent Russian government threats against Ukraine. Putin characterized Zelensky’s formula as “banning any negotiations with Russia,” presumably because one of the principles would require Putin to withdraw from Ukrainian territory in compliance with the U.N. Charter.
Putin, to the contrary, began the war in Ukraine with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and broadened that initiative in 2022 by asserting sovereignty over four partially occupied regions of eastern Ukraine.
“If the current situation persists … Ukrainian statehood may sustain an irreparable, very serious blow,” Putin said last week.
The Kremlin strongman’s deputy on the Russian Security Council, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, went even further last week when he declared that “the presence of an independent state in the historical Russian territories will now be a constant reason for the resumption of hostilities,” regardless of the character of the Ukrainian government or its policies.
“That is why the existence of Ukraine is fatal for Ukrainians … no matter how they hate the Russian leadership,” Medvedev wrote on social media. “They will understand that life in a large common state, which they now do not love much, is better than death. Their death and the death of their loved ones. And the faster Ukrainians realize this – the better.”
Ukraine’s envoy cited that statement before the council as “a manifest of genocide” by the Russian leadership. And he prefaced the Security Council meeting with a statement, co-signed by 48 countries and the European Union, that condemned Russia’s “hypocrisy” in protesting aid to Ukraine while partnering with North Korea and other rogue states.
“While Ukraine is trying to defend its civilian population, the Russian Federation is killing the Ukrainian people with arms procured from other countries,” Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said Monday. “We condemn continued military support for Russia’s war of aggression, including by Iran, Belarus and the DPRK. … The Russian Federation’s actions undermine the credibility of Security Council resolutions, undermine the global non-proliferation regime, exacerbate regional tensions, and endanger us all.”
Hwang, the South Korean ambassador, amplified that refrain while condemning Russia’s deployment of North Korean short-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine.
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“Russia’s use of North Korean missiles in Ukraine also has significant implications on global nuclear nonproliferation, as well as on the Korean Peninsula,” he said. “It is difficult to fathom the repercussions.”
Japan’s envoy at the meeting concurred. “This is not merely a European issue. It affects the whole of the international community, including Japan,” she said. “Its actions shake the very foundations of the international order based on the rule of law. Therefore, this is not about choosing sides between Russia and others, nor is it a conflict between ‘the West’ and Russia, as Russia often claims. In this war of aggression, there are only those who violate the U.N. Charter and those who defend it.”
