Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has cautioned the international community against inciting the Kim Jong Eun regime in a new essay on foreign policy released by state news agency RIA Novosti today.
In the piece, which harshly criticizes the international community’s approach to the recent conflict in Libya and warns that Russia will continue to reject western military intervention in Syria, Putin comments, “I am convinced that today it is essential to be particularly careful. It would be inadvisable to try and test the strength of the new North Korean leader and provoke a rash countermeasure.”
“The West has shown too much willingness to ‘punish’ certain countries,” he asserts. “At any minor development it reaches for sanctions if not armed force. Let me remind you that we are not in the 19thcentury or even the 20th century now.”
Putin, noting that Russia accepts neither North Korea nor Iran’s nuclear status, calls instead for diplomacy alone to be employed, so as to ensure no repeat of the events that occurred in Libya, which he refers to as having been “primeval.”
Explaining Russia’s foreign policy approach to Pyongyang, Putin, who is likely to be the next Russian president, notes that Russia “cannot choose her neighbors” before commenting, “We will continue conducting an active dialogue with the leaders of North Korea and developing good-neighborly relations with it, while at the same time trying to encourage Pyongyang to settle the nuclear issue. Obviously, it would be easier to do this if mutual trust is built up and the inter-Korean dialogue resumes on the peninsula.”
Putin says that from his perspective, the behavior of the west is actually encouraging states to obtain nuclear weapons based on the premise that “If I have the A-bomb in my pocket, nobody will touch me because it’s more trouble than it is worth.”
