North Korea on Wednesday recognized two Russian-backed separatist “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine as independent states, a separatist leader and a Russian state news agency said.
The move makes North Korea only the third country, after Russia and Syria, to recognize the two breakaway entities, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), in Ukraine’s Donbass region.
In a post on his Telegram channel, DPR leader Denis Pushilin said he expected “fruitful cooperation” and increased trade with North Korea, an isolated, nuclear-armed state more than 6,500 kilometers away.
The DPR embassy in Moscow posted a photo on its Telegram channel of a ceremony at which the North Korean ambassador to the Russian capital Sin Hong-chol presented a certificate of recognition to DPR envoy Olga Makeyeva.
The North Korean embassy in Moscow confirmed that it recognized the independence of both entities on Wednesday, Russian news agency TASS later reported.
Russia, which has supported the regions since 2014, recognized them on the eve of its invasion of Ukraine in a move condemned by Kiev and the West as illegal.
The justification for the decision to launch the war, called a “special military operation”, would be to protect Russian speakers living in the region from “genocide”.
Kiev and the West dismissed these claims as a pretext to wage war and seize parts of Ukraine’s territory. North Korea had previously expressed support for Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Source: CNN Brasil
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