Vladimir Putin warns Donald Trump that the North Korean missile crisis risks becoming a large scale military conflict. President Putin of Russia sounded the alarm in statements on the Kremlin website in preparations for the upcoming 9th BRICS Summit. The nuclear standoff between the United States and North Korea has played out with government officials on both sides delivering threats through the news media and Twitter.
In the article titled , “BRICS: Towards New Horizons of Strategic Partnership,” Putin stated, “provocations, pressure and militarist and insulting rhetoric are a dead-end road.”
Putin also wrote, “Russia believes that the policy of putting pressure on Pyongyang to stop its nuclear missile programme is misguided and futile.”
North Korea has conducted numerous nuclear missile tests over the first nine months of the Trump presidency. Kim Jong-Un recently threatened to launch missiles in the vicinity of Guam. Guam is a U.S. territory located in the Pacific Ocean.
The U.S. Air force has flown several nuclear capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula from Andersen Air Force Base located in Guam. North Korea views the flyovers and joint military drills with South Korea as preparations for war by the U.S.
The nuclear tests by North Korea have also prompted the U.S. military to deploy the THAAD missile defense system on the Korean peninsula. The U.S. military has conducted a plurality of successful tests of the THAAD missile system since July of 2017.
South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
North Korea test firing a missile that flew over Japan’s airspace has prompted a parliamentary debate in Japan about the specter of Japan’s military acquiring cruise missiles for use in a potential pre-emptive strike on North Korea by Japan. Defense expert, Narushige Michishita stated, “It has become even more important for Japan to improve its missile and civil defense capabilities, and seriously think about acquiring limited but meaningful strike capabilities.”
There have also been news reports of both Russia and China amassing a significant number of military troops on their respective borders with North Korea.
Putin used his article to pressure all interested parties to exhaust all means to arrive at a diplomatic solution to the Korean missile crisis. Putin stated, “The region’s problems should only be settled through a direct dialogue of all the parties concerned without any preconditions.”
[Featured Image by Alexei Druzhinin/AP Images]
