The Russian president Vladimir Putin has warned that the escalating North Korean crisis could cause a “planetary catastrophe” and huge loss of life.
“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end,”
he told reporters in China. “It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”
On Sunday North Korea
carried out its sixth and by far most powerful nuclear test to date. The underground blast triggered a magnitude 6.3 tremor and was more powerful than the bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war.
Speaking on the final day of the Brics summit in Xiamen, China, Putin said Russia condemned North Korea’s provocations but believed further sanctions would be “useless and ineffective”.
Foreign interventions in Iraq and Libya had convinced North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that he needed nuclear weapons to survive, Putin said.
“We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. His children were killed, I think
his grandson was shot, the whole country was destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged ... We all know how this happened and people in North Korea remember well what happened in Iraq.
“They will eat grass but will not stop their programme as long as they do not feel safe.”
