CNS News
Oct 5, 2017
Russian President Vladimir Putin in a surprise admission Wednesday said that in the early 2000s, then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told him personally that his regime had an atomic bomb.
Putin, speaking at an energy efficiency forum in Moscow, raised the issue while arguing that decades of sanctions against Pyongyang had proven counterproductive and ineffective in curbing its nuclear and missile ambitions.
In doing so, he indirectly accused the United States of provoking North Korea – by targeting its banks – into withdrawing from previous agreements and accelerating its nuclear program, to the point where it now possesses a hydrogen bomb.
“In 2001, when I was on my way to pay a visit to Japan, I made a stop in North Korea, where I had a meeting with the father of the country’s current leader [Kim Jong-un],” Putin said, according to a Tass news agency translation.
“It was back then when he told me that they had a nuclear bomb,” he continued.
This article was posted: Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 6:43 am
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