U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is greeted before he boards a plane at the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Jan. 6, 2025.
VOICE OF AMERICA | Published January 6, 2025
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that North Korea and China are the “biggest ongoing drivers” allowing Russia to carry out its war in Ukraine, and that security assurances will need to be a part of potential future negotiations ending the conflict.
Speaking during a visit to South Korea, Blinken said North Korean supplies of artillery, ammunition and troops, along with Chinese support for Russia’s military industrial base are giving the Russian military the backing it needs to continue carrying out the fight it started in February 2022.
He said North Korea is already seeing a return on its involvement in the conflict in the form of Russian military equipment and training for North Korea troops.
“We believe it has the intent to share space and satellite technology with the DPRK,” Blinken said.
With only two weeks left in the Biden administration, the United States has been rushing to send remaining authorized aid to Ukraine amid uncertainty about how President-elect Donald Trump may approach the war.
Blinken said Monday the U.S. has been trying to make sure Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself, and to have the “strongest possible hand” at a future negotiating table with Russia.
“If there is going to be, at some point, a ceasefire, it’s not going to be, in Putin’s mind, ‘game over’,” Blinken said. “His imperial ambitions remain, and what he will seek to do is to rest, to refit, and eventually to re-attack.”
Blinken said it is necessary to have an “adequate deterrent in place so that he doesn’t do that, so that he thinks twice – three times – before engaging in any re-aggression.”
Ukraine’s military said Monday it shot down 79 of the 128 drones that Russian forces deployed overnight in attack targeting multiple Ukrainian regions.
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SOURCE: www.voanews.com
RELATED: Blinken warns Russia is close to sharing advanced satellite technology with North Korea
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends the joint press conference on January 6, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
CNN | Published January 6, 2025
(CNN) — Russia may be close to sharing advanced satellite technology with North Korea after the isolated nation supplied troops to help bolster Moscow’s war in Ukraine, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Monday.
“The DPRK is already receiving Russian military equipment and training. Now, we have reason to believe that Moscow intends to share advance space and satellite technology with Pyongyang,” Blinken said from Seoul, using North Korea’s official name.
Blinken is visiting the key US ally as part of his last foreign tour ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, and his comments came as North Korea test-fired what appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile into the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The US’s top diplomat also reiterated an earlier warning by the US ambassador to the United Nations that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be close to accepting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, reversing its decades-long commitment to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
The US has repeatedly expressed concern over the growing alliance between Pyongyang and Moscow since Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a landmark defense pact in June last year.
Putin’s visit to Pyongyang was widely seen to be about securing ongoing support from Kim for his grinding war in Ukraine as weapons stockpiles dwindled and huge numbers of young Russian men were killed or wounded in the invasion he began nearly three years ago.
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SOURCE: www.edition.cnn.com
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