“North Korea’s provision of weapons has strengthened Russia’s hand in Ukraine by allowing it to keep its arsenals stocked at home, Germany’s top military official said during a visit to South Korea on Monday.
Chief of Defence General Carsten Breuer said Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have reached out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for weapons if they were not useful.
“It’s about increasing the production of weapons for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, it’s also strengthening Russia by making it possible for them to keep their stocks like they are,” Breuer told reporters in the South Korean capital Seoul.
Ukraine and the United States, among other countries and independent analysts, say that Kim is helping Russia in the war against Ukraine by supplying rockets and missiles in return for economic and other military assistance from Moscow.
North Korea has shipped at least 16,500 containers of munitions and related materiel to Russia since September last year, and Russia had launched more than 65 of those missiles at targets in Ukraine, Robert Koepcke, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said in a speech last week.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied direct arms transfers, which would violate United Nations embargoes.”
“Hasina’s exit on an India-bound military helicopter came after crowds broke a curfew and stormed the prime minister’s residence in the capital Dhaka, following weeks of bloody protest.
The movement that ultimately toppled her started with students frustrated at their lack of job prospects and snowballed to include ordinary Bangladeshis facing increasingly tough economic conditions. But the jubilant scenes in the capital Dhaka come at great cost; around 300 people have been killed since the protests started in June, and the country’s future remains uncertain as a military-backed caretaker government steps in.
After a decade and a half in power, Hasina’s legacy is complicated. On the one hand, her government built modern infrastructure and improved development opportunities, especially for the poor. But she also increasingly cracked down on the press, as well as the opposition, and as time went on, many forms of dissent.
Army General Waker-uz-Zaman announced Monday that the military had taken control of the government; parliament is being dissolved, and the government is formulating a plan for fresh elections.
“The country is going through a revolutionary period,” Zaman said in a national television address. “We request you to have faith in the army of the country. Please don’t go back to the path of violence and please return to nonviolent and peaceful ways.”
Though a people-power movement has won a victory in driving Hasina out, the young democracy is entering a period of major uncertainty; indeed, what happens next for Bangladesh is anyone’s guess.”
“The partnership does not make NATO a direct player in the Indo-Pacific but allows it to coordinate with the four partners on issues of mutual concern, said Mirna Galic, senior policy analyst on China and East Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace. For example, she wrote in an analysis, they can share information and align on actions such as sanctions and aid delivery but do not intervene in military crises outside of their own regions.
The NATO summit will allow the United States and its European and Indo-Pacific allies to push back against China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, according to Luis Simon, director of the Centre for Security Diplomacy and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.”