Vladimir Putin rejects sanctions as ineffective against North Korea

Moscow/Xiamen: Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected US calls for new sanctions against North Korea, criticizing punitive measures as “useless and ineffective” in pressuring Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.

Putin urged the international community instead to offer security guarantees to North Korea. “They’ll eat grass, but they won’t abandon their program unless they feel secure,” the Russian leader told reporters at the BRICS summit in Xiamen, China, on Tuesday.

US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said Monday the Trump administration would seek the strongest possible sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime. Kim was “begging for war” after testing what he claimed was a hydrogen bomb, she said after a meeting of the UN Security Council.

The standoff between North Korea and the US has become the most dangerous foreign crisis facing President Donald Trump, as the isolated Communist state accelerates its programme to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The Russian leader condemned what he described as a policy of whipping up war hysteria, which he said could lead to a “global catastrophe and a huge number” of human casualties “There’s no other path except for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem,” he said. Bloomberg