Sister of Kim Jong-un claims Ukraine is seeking nuclear weapons.
According to Saturday’s report by the country’s official news agency KCNA, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of leader Kim Jong-un, charged Ukraine with advocating for nuclear weapons.
Her claim was supported by a petition that had garnered less than 1,000 signatures online in that nation.
Kim said that this kind of petition could be a political ploy by the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but he offered no proof to support his claim.
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement last week that Moscow plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a public petition was filed to the Ukrainian presidential office’s website on Thursday, calling for Ukraine to host nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, or for it to be armed with its own nuclear weapons.
By Saturday afternoon, the petition had gained only 611 signatures, far short of the 25,000 needed for a response from Zelenskiy. Kyiv officials have not commented on the petition so far.
North Korea is forging closer ties with the Kremlin amid shared isolation by the West and it supported Moscow’s position after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, including its later proclaimed annexation of parts of Ukraine that most U.N. members condemned as illegal. It has denied providing arms to Moscow.
The incident is not the first time Ms Kim has shared her thoughts on the conflict in Ukraine, having previously warned the West had ‘crossed a line’ with its decision to supply tanks to Ukraine.
Speaking in NK state media, she said: ‘The US is the arch criminal which poses serious threat and challenge to the strategic security of Russia and pushes the regional situation to the present grave phase.
‘I do not doubt that any military hardware the US and the West boast of will be burnt into pieces in the face of the indomitable fighting spirit and might of the heroic Russian army and people.’
She added that North Korea will always ‘stand in the same trench’ with Russia.
North Korea is the only nation other than Russia and Syria to recognise the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.
The United States previously accused Pyongyang of supplying weapons to the Wagner Group, Russia’s mercenary army.