Trump says ‘Russia is not helping’ with North Korea
US President Donald Trump may have found another whipping boy when it comes to reining in North Korea.
On Wednesday, Trump accused the Kremlin of helping North Korea skirt international sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump told Reuters in an interview. “What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.”
Trump’s rare criticism of Russia came as he commended China for largely complying with international sanctions passed in 2017 that have targeted North Korean shipping, coal, seafood and labor.
His comments appear to reference reports that Russian tankers have helped refuel North Korea with shipments at sea, and follows allegations from US officials that Russia has been lax in its implementation of UN Security Council sanctions.
Russia didn’t make any immediate comment on the accusations.
Trump welcomed the ongoing dialogue between the two Koreas regarding next month’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Reuters reported, but said he didn’t think direct US talks with Kim Jong Un would solve anything.
On Wednesday, South Korea announced its athletes will march with their Northern counterparts at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony under a unified flag, a diplomatic breakthrough following days of talks between the two countries.
Russia’s role
US Senator Tammy Duckworth, who returned to the US from a trip to South Korea and Japan on Tuesday, said it is clear that the Russians and Chinese continue to aid North Korea despite additional sanctions.
“The Russians are definitely providing supplies to the North Koreans and so are the Chinese. It is very clear both the Russians and Chinese are violating the additional sanctions,” the Illinois Democrat told reporters Wednesday.
Russia officially employs some 40,000 North Korean migrant workers, and possibly more, many of whom work in construction in major Russian cities. Some analysts worry that Moscow will find loopholes for them to stay, citing “humanitarian” reasons.
“The two countries that consume the most North Korean slave labor are China and Russia,” she said.
In late December, the US spearheaded the passage of a UN Security Council Resolution that levied the toughest restrictions on North Korea to date, banning exports of industrial equipment, machinery, transportation vehicles and industrial metals to the hermit nation.
Marshall Billingslea, the assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the US Treasury Department, showed a US Senate panel in September how a handful of vessels were skirting sanctions by transporting illicit North Korean coal while traveling between China and Russia.
Billingslea also said North Korean bank representatives “operate in Russia in flagrant disregard of the very resolutions adopted by Russia at the UN.”
Experts CNN spoke with believe that while Russian firms or individuals may have helped North Korea, the scale of those operations are relatively small.
“I don’t think that the Russians can offer what the North Koreans are really looking for,” said Anthony Ruggiero, an expert in the use of targeted financial measures at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
“The North Koreans might be able to replace parts of the sanctions evasions schemes they have going in China, but they’re not going to be able to pick up wholesale and move,” he said.
Source:-Â http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/17/politics/north-korea-trump/index.html
