North Korea accused the United States on Thursday of driving the Ukraine disaster towards a world nuclear catastrophe by supplying F-16 fighter jets to Kyiv’s forces, saying Washington had no proper to criticise Pyongyang’s navy cooperation with Russia.

North Korea has beforehand condemned Washington for supplying arms together with cluster munitions to Ukraine and denied that it had offered artillery, rockets and missiles to Russia regardless of its assist of Moscow over its battle with Ukraine.

The United States has “no legal right or moral justification to criticise normal cooperation between sovereign states in the defence field,” the North’s defence minister Kang Sun Nam stated in an announcement carried by the official KCNA information company.

Pyongyang has sought to deepen relations with Russia and final month invited Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to occasions marking the seventieth anniversary of the tip of the Korean War.

“The United States is responsible for driving the Ukraine crisis to the brink of a global nuclear war by supplying F-16 fighter jets to the Zelensky puppet regime,” Kang stated, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“We once again send full support and solidarity to the Russian people’s fight of justice waged to defend its sovereign rights and achieve international justice and will increase by hundredfold the military friendship with Russia,” he stated.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to remove safety threats arising from Kyiv’s deepening ties with the West. Kyiv and its Western supporters name Russia’s actions an unprovoked battle of conquest.

The United States has authorized sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands to assist Kyiv in its counter-offensive in opposition to Russian forces.