Russian President Vladimir Putin risks emboldening North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to expand and even use nuclear weapons, according to a senior State Department official.

“Kim is talking about mass-producing and using tactical nuclear weapons; Russia is looking the other way,” Dr. Jung Pak, the State Department’s lead official for North Korea in the East Asia and Pacific Affairs Bureau, said. “What does that mean for Kim’s risk calculus if he sees Russia looking the other way on that kind of statement that would have been condemned in the past?”