North Korea condemns Sweden and Finland because of NATO’s bid
Seoul, May 6 (IANS) On Friday, the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Sweden and Finland for their expected applications to join NATO and accused the United States of political motives behind the move.
In a post on its website, the ministry said that the Nordic countries’ NATO membership will only aggravate the military confrontation with Russia and “disrupt” military balance in the Baltic Sea region, reports Yonhap News Agency.
“The above facts prove that the United States and the West take the Ukrainian situation as a golden opportunity to compress Russia’s strategic space by tightening the surrounding network around Russia,” it claimed.
The ministry then warned that such measures by the United States and other Western countries would inevitably provoke a stronger reaction from Russia.
Pyongyang’s message came when the White House stated that Washington could “address any concerns that both countries may have about the time period between an application for NATO membership and the formal accession to the alliance.”
In a separate statement, the ministry stressed that US sanctions against Russia have proved meaningless, saying that Moscow reported a current account surplus of $ 58 billion in the first quarter of this year.
It also claimed that European countries were “recently screaming in fear” that the suspension of gas imports from Russia could lead to a serious economic crisis.
“Reality clearly shows that the sanctions that the United States and the West are imposing on Russia are proving to be a boomerang flying back to their neck muscles,” it added.
–IANS