North Korea’s communist regime announced on Thursday, via its state news agency, that it recognizes Ukraine’s two separatist sides, the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk, as sovereign states, following in the footsteps of Russia’s allies and Syria.
Donetsk and Lugansk together form the Donbas region of Ukraine, which borders Russia and has a large ethnic Russian population. Moscow has been fomenting civil war between the “people’s republics” there and the Ukrainian government since 2014, when Russia also forcibly colonized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
But Russia did not recognize the so-called sovereignty of separatist groups in Donbas until this year, when it formalized its invasion of Ukraine by sending official Russian troops to the country and attacking Kyiv and its suburbs. The expansion of the occupation in February led largely to a full-fledged Russian offensive in the Donbass and the southern regions near Crimea; Much of the violence around Kyiv has subsided.
Ukrainian soldiers boarded a Ukrainian armored combat vehicle in the Seversk countryside of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on July 8, 2022, against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)
“DPRK [North Korea] The Foreign Minister sent letters to his counterparts from the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic on Wednesday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday. “In his letters, he stated that the DPRK government decided to recognize the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, and expressed its desire to establish state relations with these countries on the idea of independence. , peace and friendship.
NEW: North Korea becomes the third country to recognize the Russian-backed separatist states of Donetsk and Lugansk in Ukraine.
Wednesday’s move prompted Kiev to officially sever diplomatic ties with Pyongyanghttps://t.co/KiwLp6xW97
– NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) 14 July 2022
The leader of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” Denis Pushilin excitedly announced the steps in a message in the encrypted Telegram application.
“The international status of the Donetsk People’s Republic and its state continues to grow. “This is another diplomatic victory for us,” he said, according to a translation by the Russian TASS news agency.
Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin said that North Korea recognizes the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic: https://t.co/bvwBCIIKZv pic.twitter.com/0awBssLAoB
– TASS (@tassagency_ru) 13 July 2022
The Donetsk separatist leader added that he hopes the war-torn region can expand “economic” ties with North Korea, one of the world’s most dysfunctional economies.
Russia, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, and North Korea are the only states that recognize the Donbass separatists as their own countries. Abkhazia, a separatist region in Georgia where Russia helped attack the Tbilisi government in 2008, recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as “independent” states shortly after Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s statement in February. South Ossetia, another Georgian separatist region involved in the Russian-Georgian war in 2008, recognized the separatists at the start of the civil war in Ukraine in 2014.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. (Future Publishing by Gennady Minchenko/Ukrinform/Getty Images)
Ukraine, which previously maintained diplomatic relations with North Korea, angrily cut them off after Thursday’s announcement.
In the message, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine strongly condemns the decision of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to recognize the so-called “independence” of the territories temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. . . Official statement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov at the Kremlin in Moscow on Monday, July 11, 2022. (Photo from the Kremlin pool via Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, AP)
“We see this decision as an attempt by Pyongyang to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a gross violation of the Constitution of Ukraine, the UN Charter, and fundamental standards and principles of international law,” the statement said. North Korea’s view on the matter is “wrong” and “has no legal effect”.
In the photo file dated January 7, 2020, Syrian President Bashar Assad listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his meeting in Damascus, Syria. (Aleksey Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin pool, photo by AP)
“In response to such unfriendly action, Ukraine announced that it has cut off diplomatic relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine noted. said. Communist state.
North Korean officials recently said they were considering moving forward with establishing “diplomatic” relations with Donetsk and Lugansk, and sent senior diplomats in May to meet with individual envoys. North Korea’s Ambassador to Moscow, Sin Hong Chol, met in the Russian capital the same month with representatives of the same Donbass group to “establish and intensify mutual cooperation”.
Russia and North Korea maintained close relations under the communist dictator Kim Jong-un. Russia was one of three foreign countries that Kim personally visited – a short list that includes only China and Singapore. Kim met with Putin in 2019 for a summit in Vladivostok, a city in western Russia, aimed at strengthening ties between the countries.
Russia has largely supported North Korea in international arenas such as the United Nations, despite its apparent failure to use its veto power to prevent the Security Council from imposing unprecedentedly stringent sanctions in 2017. publication, most recent – – illegal testing of nuclear weapons. China, North Korea’s main ally and accomplice in the ongoing Korean War, also failed to thwart the sanctions. But the UN has accused China and Russia of avoiding North Korea’s sanctions to help keep the regime’s economy afloat and keep Kim in power.
“The head of the Asia-1 Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other speakers praised the President as a unique person who gave the idea of \u200b\u200bthe immortal Juche to the revolutionary people fighting for freedom and liberty.” Rodong Sinmun “An iron commander who founded the Korean party, state and army and defeated two formidable imperialist enemies in one generation, and a unique statesman and politician who made a great contribution to the development of relations between the DPRK and Russia.”
The Kim regime is one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Hundreds of thousands are believed to be imprisoned in concentration camps for allegedly disobeying the regime or not worshiping the Kim family in any way.
Source: Breitbart
