March 29, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Russia faced a mounting backlash Friday after

using its veto power to effectively end official UN monitoring of sanctions
on North Korea amid a probe into alleged arms transfers between Moscow and
Pyongyang.
Russia's UN Security Council veto on Thursday blocked the renewal of the
panel of experts tasked with investigating violations of sanctions tied to
North Korea's banned nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
South Korea's foreign ministry on Friday slammed the move as an
"irresponsible decision".
Seoul has accused Pyongyang of sending thousands of containers of weapons to
Moscow for use in Ukraine, and Russia's move was "almost comparable to
destroying a CCTV to avoid being caught red-handed", said Hwang Joon-kook,
South Korea's UN ambassador.

The European Union said Moscow's veto was "an effort to conceal unlawful arms
transfers between DPRK and Russia, in the context of the latter's illegal war
of aggression against Ukraine", referring to the North by its official name.
The United States, meanwhile, called the vote a "self-interested effort to
bury the panel's reporting on its own collusion" with North Korea.

"Russia's actions today have cynically undermined international peace and
security, all to advance the corrupt bargain that Moscow has struck with the
DPRK," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said after the Thursday
vote.

The panel's mandate expires at the end of April.

North Korea has been under mounting sanctions since 2006, put in place by the
UN Security Council in response to its nuclear program.

Since 2019, Russia and China have tried to persuade the Security Council to
ease the sanctions, which have no expiration date.

The council has long been divided on the issue.

- 'Political solution' -
China abstained rather than joining Russia in the veto. All other members had
voted in favor of renewing the expert panel.

Beijing said Friday it opposed "blindly supporting sanctions" on North Korea.
"The current situation in the (Korean) Peninsula remains tense, and blindly
imposing sanctions cannot solve the issue," Chinese foreign ministry
spokesperson Lin Jian said.

"A political solution is the only way," he said, when asked why Beijing
abstained during the vote, adding that a "showdown at the UN Security Council
is not conducive to its authority."

China and Russia have in recent years ramped up economic cooperation and
diplomatic contacts, and their strategic partnership has only grown closer
since the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's UN envoy Vasily Nebenzia had earlier said that without an annual
review to assess and potentially modify the sanctions, the panel was
unjustified.
"The panel has continued to focus on trivial matters that are not
commensurate with the problems facing the peninsula," Nebenzia said.
- Continued tests -
Additional Security Council sanctions were levelled on Pyongyang in 2016 and
2017, but the North's development of its nuclear and weapons programmes has
continued unabated.

Last week, Pyongyang tested a solid-fuel engine for a "new-type intermediate-
range hypersonic missile," state media reported.

Recent cruise missile launches have prompted speculation that North Korea is
testing those weapons before shipping them to Moscow for use in Ukraine.
In its latest report, issued at the beginning of March, the sanctions panel
reported that North Korea "continued to flout" sanctions, including by
launching ballistic missiles and breaching oil import limits.
It added that it is investigating reports of arms shipments from Pyongyang to
Russia for use in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba took to social media Thursday to
call the veto "a guilty plea".