Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 1, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleNorth Korea condemns a UN report on its military ties with Russia, calling it biased and a violation of sovereignty, amidst claims of munitions supply.
SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea condemned a multilateral sanctions monitoring group's recent report on ties with Russia as political and biased, saying its military cooperation with Moscow was a "legitimate exercise of the sovereign right," state media said on Monday.
A report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, a group comprising 11 UN members, said North Korea enabled Russia to increase missile attacks against critical Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and supplied more than 20,000 containers of munitions.
The MSMT is "a political tool operating according to the geopolitical interests of the West and, therefore, it has no justification to investigate the exercise of sovereign rights of other countries," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement cited by the state KCNA news agency.
The ministry called the group's move "hostile" and "outrageous encroachment" on its sovereignty.
The group also said Moscow helped North Korea improve missile performance in return by supplying data. It was launched in October last year to monitor U.N. sanctions against North Korea after a Security Council panel was scrapped by Russia and China.
After months of silence, North Korea and Russia confirmed in April Pyongyang had deployed troops to fight for Russia in the war in Ukraine as part of a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty their leaders signed last year.
The Foreign Ministry said its Russia military cooperation was legitimate following their treaty requiring each parties to provide military assistance in case of an armed attack against the other.
"We express serious concern over the provocative acts of the West to encroach upon the sovereign rights of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with its unilateral and high-handed political and legal standards as a yardstick and give stern warning against the negative consequences to be entailed by its reckless acts," the ministry said, according to state media.
(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Rod Nickel)
North Korea condemned the report as political and biased, claiming it was a 'hostile' act against its sovereignty.
The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team is a group of 11 UN members established to monitor U.N. sanctions against North Korea.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry stated that its military cooperation with Russia is legitimate under a treaty requiring mutual military assistance.
North Korea expressed serious concern over what it described as provocative acts by the West that encroach upon its sovereign rights.
In April, North Korea and Russia confirmed that Pyongyang had deployed troops to support Russia in the war in Ukraine as part of a strategic partnership.
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