President Vladimir Putin warned that the escalating crisis over North Korea’s weapons program risks developing into a “global catastrophe” with mass casualties. But Putin, who was speaking in China on Tuesday, cautioned against “military hysteria” and said that the only way to resolve the crisis was through diplomacy.
This follows the American Presidents cautions to North Korea, as he reacted and urged diplomatic caution but also warned that the US has limited patience on this issue. On Sunday, as he attended church in Washington, A journalist asked, if he was prepraed to attack North Korea, and he reponded with “We’ll see”.
Meanwhile President Putin warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has calculated that the survival of his regime depends on its development of nuclear weapons. Kim had seen how western intervention in Iraq had ended in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein after which the country was ravaged by war, Putin warned, and Kim was determined not to suffer the same fate.
“Saddam Hussein rejected the production of weapons of mass destruction, but even under that pretence, he was destroyed and members of his family were killed,” Putin said. “The country was demolished and Saddam Hussein was hanged. Everyone knows that and everyone in North Korea knows that.”
On Monday, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Kim was “begging for war” and urged the UN Security Council to adopt the strongest sanctions measures possible to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear program. UN members are advising the US on caution and reminding the US of how the previous led campaigns have failed.
But speaking at the closure of the BRICs summit in Beijing President Putin said that while Russia condemned North Korea’s latest actions, imposing any kind of sanctions would be “useless and ineffective.” Kim would rather starve his people than see his regime overthrown, he said.
North Korea has long maintained it wants nuclear weapons and long-range missiles in order to deter the United States from attempting to overthrow the regime of Kim Jong Un. North Koreans look back through history and states like Iraq — where former dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the United States, and Libya where the country’s late leader, Moammar Gaddafi, gave up his nuclear ambitions for sanctions relief and aid, only to be toppled and killed after the US intervened in the country’s civil unrest. Kim Jong Un believes that only being able to threaten the US homeland with a retaliatory nuclear strike can stop American military intervention.
Many experts believe North Korea would not use the weapons first. Kim Jong Un values his regime’s survival above all else and knows the use of a nuclear weapon would start a war he could not win, which is consistent to President Putin’s approach of diplomacy, to quash the media hysteria surrounding the issue.
The latest escalation of the crisis came on Sunday when Pyongyang announced it had conducted a sixth nuclear test, which it claimed was of a hydrogen bomb. The claim has not been independently verified, but seismological data indicated that the weapon was the most powerful ever to be detonated by Pyongyang. North Korea claims it now has the capability of mounting a thermonuclear weapon on a long-range missile capable of striking the United States.
In response to the latest tests, the South Korean Navy announced Tuesday it conducted live-fire drills off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula to check its “immediate operational readiness” after the country’s air force and army conducted their own joint drills. It had already mounted a huge show of military force on Monday.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke with US President Donald Trump on Monday and agreed to lift current restrictions on the payload weight of South Korea’s ballistic missiles, according to a South Korean presidential spokesman.
