Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and vice minister of the Workers’ Party of Korea. Korean Central News Agency|Yonhap News
North Korean Workers’ Party Vice Minister Kim Yo-jong criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the 1st, saying that Ukraine is trying to possess nuclear weapons.
In a statement announced by the Korean Central News Agency on the same day, Vice Minister Kim said, “At the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, Ukraine announced its position to restore its position as a nuclear weapons state, and Ukrainian official figures have been outright expressing their nuclear ambitions on various occasions. What has been revealed is a well-known fact.”
In addition, a petition claiming the deployment of American nuclear weapons or its own nuclear armament has been posted on the website of the Ukrainian President’s Office.
In a speech at the Munich Security Conference last year, President Zelensky called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the implementation of the ‘Budapest Memorandum’. It is interpreted that Vice President Kim was referring to this. The Budapest Memorandum is an agreement signed by Ukraine in 1994 with the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia to guarantee independent sovereignty and territorial stability in return for giving up nuclear weapons.
Vice Minister Kim continued, arguing that for Ukraine to look to the US for military aid in its war with Russia, it is inviting nuclear calamity.
He said, “If Zelensky’s authorities calculated that they could avoid Russia’s powerful fire only by stepping under the already punctured nuclear umbrella of the United States, then they are clearly on the wrong path, the last path.”
At the same time, Ukraine’s discussion of bringing in US nuclear weapons or developing its own nuclear weapons is a “very dangerous political ambition to try to survive by any means even by gambling with the fate of its own country and people.” Rather, it will become a clearer target within Russia’s nuclear aiming circle.”