North Korea’s Kim accuses US of stoking potential ‘thermonuclear war’

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Nov. 21 accused the U.S. of stoking global tensions that could escalate “into the most destructive thermonuclear war.”

Speaking at a military exhibition in Pyongyang, Kim claimed his previous experience of negotiating with Washington had proved to him that the U.S. was “aggressive and hostile” towards his country.

“Never before have the warring parties on the Korean peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war,” he said in comments reported by Reuters.

“We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States, but what we became certain of from the result is not the superpower’s willingness to coexist, but its thorough stance of power and aggressive and hostile policy toward us that can never change.”

Kim’s comments came on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country had launched its “newest missile,” an IRBM called “Oreshnik,” in an attack on Dnipro, eastern Ukraine that morning.

He said the test was in response to Ukraine targeting facilities in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk oblasts with long-range, Western-supplied ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles on Nov. 19 and 20.

The Oreshnik missile is designed to carry nuclear weapons. However, Putin said it was not armed with a nuclear warhead in this instance.

Putin warned that Russia would use weapons against any country whose arms are used to strike Russian targets.

North Korea has dispatched 10,000 troops to Russia, with most of them deployed in the western Kursk Oblast and taking part in combat, a Pentagon spokesperson said during a press briefing on Nov. 12.

Russia is mustering a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, to launch a counter-offensive against a Ukrainian salient in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, the New York Times reported on Nov. 10.

The new force comes as Russia saw its heaviest losses last month, and the North Korean troops could be replacing injured and killed Russian soldiers, according to some experts.