Tokyo, 04 August, /AJMEDIA/
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu tried to convince North Korea to sell munitions to Moscow when he visited Pyongyang last week, a White House official said Thursday.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that based on intelligence information the request was made to help Russia in its war against Ukraine, adding that the United States remains concerned that North Korea may be contemplating providing military support to Moscow.
“This is yet another example of how desperate Mr. Putin has become because his war machine is being affected by the sanctions and the export controls,” Kirby said during a press briefing.
“He is going through a vast amount of inventory to try to subjugate Ukraine, and he’s reaching out to countries like North Korea, like Iran, and certainly he’s been trying to reach out to China to get support for his war machine,” the spokesman added.
Shoigu, as well as a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Bureau, visited Pyongyang for the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice, which was marked on July 27.
A day before the anniversary, celebrated in North Korea as “Victory Day,” the country’s leader Kim Jong Un showed Shoigu its military’s new weapons at an arms exhibition.
The Chinese and Russian delegations were the first known foreign dignitaries to enter Pyongyang by air since it shut its borders in January 2020 in response to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
The United States has warned a number of times of the deepening military ties between North Korea, which is continuing its barrage of missile tests, and Russia.
Late last year, the United States revealed that North Korea had sold weapons to Wagner, a Russian mercenary group involved in the invasion of Ukraine.
