Russia could supply North Korea with ‘high-precision weapons’, i.e. missiles capable of threatening American forces on the peninsula, in response to the bombing of Russia with carriers made available to Kiev by NATO countries. The warning was launched by Vladimir Putin from Hanoi, at the conclusion of a mission in East Asia during which on Wednesday in Pyongyang he signed a pact of mutual military assistance with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the event of aggression against one of the two Villages.
The Russian president he thus clarified Moscow’s plans which he had already spoken about on 5 June, meeting with foreign agencies, after the permission given by several Western countries to Ukraine to use the weapons supplied by them to attack Russia directly. On that occasion you had spoken about the possibility of supplying similar weapons to “regions of the world” from where they could be used to strike “sensitive targets” in NATO countries.
“Those who supply these weapons believe they are not at war with us – accused Putin in a late-night press conference – but I said, also to Pyongyang, that we reserve the right to supply weapons to other regions of the world, keeping in mind our agreements with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and I don’t rule it out.”
Another thing that Moscow does not rule out is a review of its nuclear doctrine, taking into account that potential adversaries “are working on this” with a possible “lowering of the threshold for the use of atomic weapons”, Putin further stated. Although he was keen to point out that there is no mention of the possibility of predicting a preventive attackbecause with a simple retaliation “the enemy would be destroyed”.
Meanwhile, discussions continue on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty signed on Wednesday between Kim and Putin. The military mutual aid intervention, in the event that either Russia or North Korea were to fall into a conflict, must be “immediate”, as established in Article 4 of the text. The contents of the 23 articles of the agreement, revealed by the North Korean news agency KCNA, met with a cold reaction from China (“it is a matter between these two countries”, said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian, adding that Beijing “would not comment”) and sent South Korea into a rage.
The hypothesis that has come under fire is the openly mentioned bilateral “military technological cooperation”. In the evening, Seoul announced what even American President Joe Biden couldn’t, despite his suffocating pressure: “We plan to reconsider the issue of arms support to Ukraine“, announced National Security Advisor Chang Ho-jin, former South Korean ambassador to Moscow, suggesting a change in Seoul’s policy on banning the supply of lethal aid to Kiev. A decision that would be a “mistake”, he put it guard Putin.
Putin and Kim also pledged “not to participate in acts that could affect their respective primary interests.” A phrase that appeared to many observers as the end of attempts to denuclearize the Korean peninsula: atomic weapons are a fundamental part of Pyongyang’s arsenals, to the point of even having constitutional coverage. Furthermore, article 16 condemns the unilateral sanctions that the two States “consider illegal” in violation of the UN Charter and international norms”, thus targeting the US and independent measures imposed on the North by American allies such as South Korea, Japan and Australia.
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby defined the pact signed in Pyongyang as “a sign of desperation by Russia” which “does not have many friends in the world”. However, Victor Cha, head of the American think tank Csis Korea, noted that “the unholy “Putin-Kim union”represents one of the greatest threats to the national security of the United States and the Biden administration is not doing enough to prevent it.”
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