Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the "zero reaction" of the West on sending North Korean troops to Russia to fight against Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported, referring to his interview with South Korean public broadcaster KBS, the text of which was released today by his office, BTA reported.
Kiev and its Western partners accuse Pyongyang of sending some 10,000 North Korean troops to Russia to join the conflict against Ukraine, condemning its "escalation (and) internationalization". "I think the reaction to this is zero, it was zero," Zelensky said of his Western partners in the KBS interview, in which he also said he was "surprised by China's silence." regarding this dispatch.
In the interview, the Ukrainian president indicated that by sending the first group of North Korean servicemen to the front in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin was "checking the reaction of the West, NATO and South Korea". If the West's reaction remains fruitless, "then the number of North Korean troops on our borders will increase," Zelensky noted. He compared the Western reaction to the arrival of North Korean servicemen to that following the "occupation of Crimea" - the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, after which, according to him, there were no "decisive measures" on the part of the West.
At the same time, the Ukrainian president highlighted China's "silence" against the background of the agreements concluded between Moscow and Pyongyang. "I am not saying that China is in our camp, but on the other hand it is one of the guarantors of security" in Asia, Zelensky said. But "North Korea is dragging the entire region into the war" in Ukraine, he added.