SEOUL, Feb. 3 The South Korean Foreign Ministry expressed Russian Ambassador to the Republic of Korea Georgy Zinoviev protested in connection with the position of the Russian Foreign Ministry on the situation on the Korean Peninsula, the South Korean Foreign Ministry stated on its website.
It is reported that Deputy Foreign Minister of South Korea Chung Byung-won invited the Russian Ambassador to the Ministry on Saturday to to express “serious protest in connection with recent statements by a representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry.”
Earlier, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that the rhetoric of South Korean President Yun Seok-yeol towards the DPRK is intended to disguise the country’s aggressive plans towards North Korea and looks odious against the backdrop of Seoul’s participation in exercises with the United States. She also called Yun Sok-yeol’s statements “openly tendentious” and the fact that the DPRK is supposedly “the only country in the world” that has legislated the possibility of delivering a “preventive nuclear strike,” noting that the United States not only at the doctrinal level asserts for itself the ability to use nuclear weapons first, but also postulate the justification of “preventive” disarming and beheading strikes on enemy countries.
Later, Seoul expressed dissatisfaction with Zakharova’s words about the situation on the Korean peninsula and the statements of President Yoon Seok-yeol.
“ “Jung Byung-won expressed extreme regret that the Russian side, ignoring the truth and unconditionally supporting North Korea, criticizes the statements of the leader of another country in rude terms, and emphasized that this will only worsen relations between Russia and South Korea,” it says in a statement by the South Korean Foreign Ministry.
It is noted that Zinoviev carefully listened to the position of the South Korean side and stated that he would transfer it to the Russian government.