US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday Russia is helping North Korea get supplies in violation of international sanctions and that Pyongyang is getting “closer every day” to being able to deliver a long-range missile to the United States.
“Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump said during an Oval Office interview with Reuters. “What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.”
China and Russia both signed onto the latest rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea imposed last year. There was no immediate comment from the Russian embassy in Washington on Trump’s remarks.
With North Korea persisting as the major global challenge facing Trump this year, the president cast doubt during the 53-minute interview on whether talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be useful. In the past he has not ruled out direct talks with Kim.
“I’d sit down, but I’m not sure that sitting down will solve the problem,” he said, noting that past negotiations with the North Koreans by his predecessors had failed to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
“They’ve talked for 25 years and they’ve taken advantage of our presidents, of our previous presidents,” he said.
He declined to comment when asked whether he had engaged in any communications at all with Kim, with whom he has exchanged public insults and threats, heightening tensions in the region.
Trump said he hoped the standoff with Pyongyang could be resolved “in a peaceful way, but it’s very possible that it can’t.”
Trump praised China for its efforts to restrict oil and coal supplies to North Korea but said Beijing could do much more to help constrain Pyongyang.
The White House last week welcomed news that imports to China from North Korea, which counts on Beijing as its main economic partner, plunged in December to their lowest in dollar terms since at least the start of 2014.
‘THEY GET CLOSER EVERY DAY’
But Trump said Russia appears to be filling in the gaps left by the Chinese.
Western European security sources told Reuters in late December that Russian tankers had supplied fuel to North Korea on at least three occasions in recent months by transferring cargoes at sea in violation of international sanctions. Russia has denied breaching North Korea sanctions.
North Korea relies on imported fuel to keep its struggling economy functioning. It also requires oil for its intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear program.
Trump has repeatedly blamed a US investigation into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election for hindering an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations.
“He can do a lot,” Trump said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “But unfortunately we don’t have much of a relationship with Russia, and in some cases it’s probable that what China takes back, Russia gives. So the net result is not as good as it could be.”
Trump, who has grappled with nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches by North Korea since he took office a year ago, said Pyongyang is steadily advancing in its ability to deliver a missile to the United States.
“They’re not there yet, but they’re close. And they get closer every day,” said Trump.
North Korea said after its last intercontinental ballistic missile launch in November that the test had put the U.S. mainland within range. Some experts agreed that based on the missile’s trajectory and distance it had the capability to fly as far as Washington D.C.
They said, however, that North Korea had not yet offered any proof that it had mastered all technical hurdles, including development of a re-entry vehicle needed to deliver a heavy nuclear warhead reliably atop an ICBM, but it was likely that it soon would. Pyongyang could reach that milestone by the end of the year, some intelligence officials said.
Trump said he welcomed talks between North and South Korea over the Winter Olympics to be held in the South next month and said this could be an initial phase in helping defuse the crisis.
He would not say whether the United States has been considering a limited, pre-emptive attack to show the North that the United States means business.
“We’re playing a very, very hard game of poker and you don’t want to reveal your hand,” he said.
US officials had spoken of Trump’s willingness to weigh a pre-emptive strike despite the risk of touching off a war. But in recent days Trump has appeared to signal more of an openness toward diplomacy.
4 Comments
#'~A*[email protected](>NRmm]w?dU4v!=^%
January 18, 2018 at 09:45““What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.””
LOL, a pathetic effort to play China and Russia against each other, but it won’t work. China is also circumventing the latest sanctions to keep NK afloat.
And Trump’s vacuous “meeting” in Vancouver with 20 countries, excl. Russia & China, is part and parcel of his pathetic handling of the Korean issue.All military options are off the table, sanctions have not worked for 65 years and will certainly not work with Russia and China circumventing them, so what is left?
Exactly: the “double freeze” option, which is slowly emerging as the only option left on that famous US table of options, esp. now that NK and SK have restarted talks and will be walking at the Olympic Winter Games in SK under 1 banner !
Plasma Dawn
January 18, 2018 at 13:38The two countries have already marched together under the Korean Unification Flag several times in the past: at the 2000 Sydney Summer Games, the 2004 Athens Summer Games, and the 2006 Torino Winter Games. It didn’t seem to have meant much as far as tensions between the two countries went for the past two decades.
Alex
January 17, 2018 at 23:20Trump on the ball as usual, fit as a fiddle and destroying the liberal left and media by the day.
I see Apple are bringing their money back to the USA and creating 20,000 jobs. Hundreds of other Companies are paying bonus’s and increasing wages. The economy is moving into high gear, illegal immigration has collapsed Obamacareless is on life support and Germany still has no Government. Global Warming has turned to Global Freezing, Mrs Maybe will be Mrs Nobody by October and
The spite and bile will continue from the left and the stupid, but taxpayers and many others will stay with this President. Meantime at the Nicosia General Hospital……
Plasma Dawn
January 18, 2018 at 02:29Remind me from which far, far away galaxy you just landed, I seem to forget.