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December 29, 2024 | 02:30 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged China to influence North Korea not to help Russia, stressing Beijing's responsibility to ensure that the conflict in Ukraine does not escalate.
"The Korean nation cannot afford to lose its people in the fighting in Europe. And this can be influenced, in particular, by neighboring countries, especially China," he said in an evening address posted on the X social media account on Friday, Anadolu reported.
"If China is sincere in its statement that the war should not escalate, it should put appropriate pressure on Pyongyang," Zelensky said after a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff to discuss developments on the front lines.
"The Donetsk region is the most intense, as are the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Kharkiv regions," he said.
President Zelensky also highlighted disturbing developments in Russia's Kursk Oblast, where North Korean military personnel have reportedly joined the fighting alongside Russian troops.
"They have suffered heavy losses. Very heavy. And we can see that the Russian military and the North Korean authorities are not at all interested in the survival of these Koreans," he said. "Everything is arranged in such a way that it is impossible for us to take Koreans prisoner - their own people execute them, there are such cases."
Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had recently captured several North Korean soldiers who were wounded and could not be saved.
"This is one of the madnesses that dictatorships are capable of," he said.
Separately, the White House said North Korean forces had suffered heavy casualties, alleging that 1,000 of its soldiers had been killed or wounded over the past week in Russia's Kursk region.
North Korea has sent more than 10,000 troops to help Russia, according to Kyiv and Seoul - although Moscow and Pyongyang have neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
Russia launched a major invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The recent deployment of North Korean troops to Russia is a sign of the growing alliance between the two pariah states.
The developments, which come as North Korea escalates tensions with South Korea, have raised concerns in Western countries. China, a long-time ally of both sides, is also wary of the friendship.
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