North Korea has denied reports that suggest Pyongyang has been supplying arms to Russia’s Wagner group, calling the allegations “groundless”.
North Korea’s foreign ministry in a statement on Friday denied the claim made by Japan’s Tokyo Shimbun that Pyongyang dispatched munitions, including artillery shells, to Russia via train through their border last month and that more shipments were expected in the coming weeks.
“The Japanese media’s false report that the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) offered munitions to Russia is the most absurd red herring, which is not worth any comment or interpretation,” the ministry spokesperson said in a statement, as cited by the official KCNA news agency.
“The DPRK remains unchanged in its principled stand on the issue of ‘arms transaction’ between the DPRK and Russia which has never happened,” the spokesperson hastened to add.
He said it was the United States that was “bringing bloodshed and destruction to Ukraine by providing it with various kinds of lethal weapons.”
Moreover, the White House claimed on Thursday that North Korea had completed an initial arms delivery of infantry rockets and missiles to private Russian security company Wagner to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine.
The North Korean foreign ministry statement did not make any mention of Wagner, but the private company’s owner Yevgeny Prigozhin denied the report as “gossip and speculation.”
South Korea’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that they have been monitoring North Korea’s activities amid concerns over possible arms transactions with Russia as the war in Ukraine enters its eleventh month.
Russia started what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine with the declared aim of “de-Nazifying” the country on February 24, after Kiev failed to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Since the beginning of the war, the US and its European allies have imposed waves of unprecedented economic sanctions against Moscow while supplying large consignments of heavy weaponry to Kiev. The Kremlin says the sanctions and the Western military assistance will prolong the war.
Despite the flow of financial and military support, particularly from Washington, the Ukrainian government says still more is needed to tip the balance in the country’s favor in the war.
Source: AFP
