The nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan criticized North Korea’s provision of military equipment for Russia and increasing military cooperation between the two nations in a meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia on Tuesday.

Seoul’s representative, Kim Gunn, attended a meeting at the U.S. Embassy with Tokyo’s newly appointed envoy, Hiroyuki Namazu, and their U.S. counterpart Sung Kim, who warned that this expansive military cooperation undermines the global nonproliferation regime and threatens stability and security.

In his opening remarks at the meeting, the U.S. envoy said that North Korea sent over one-thousand containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia in recent weeks, which will significantly increase the human toll by prolonging the brutal war in Ukraine. He expressed concerns about what Moscow will give Pyongyang in return.  

The South Korean envoy also denounced military cooperation between North Korea and Russia as a blatant violation of UN Security Council(UNSC) resolutions, warning that there will be no hesitation to make them pay for the violation.

Deducing that the North reached out to Russia seeking relief from its serious crisis, he declared that the regime will never succeed and will instead only realize that the international community’s will to denuclearize the North is stronger than its nuclear ambitions.

The Japanese nuclear envoy also strongly condemned Pyongyang for continuing to move in the opposite direction of the UNSC resolutions, urging compliance with the obligations established by the international community.