North Korean crisis: Putin thinks crisis will not go nuclear

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday he was having discussions with the leaders of Russia, Japan and the United States about how to resolve the crisis over North Korea’s weapons programme.

UPDATE: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decisively condemned North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile that flew over Japan.

UPDATE: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he thought the North Korea crisis would not escalate into a large-scale conflict involving nuclear weapons, predicting that common sense would prevail.

But he said he believed North Korea’s leadership feared any freeze of its nuclear programme would be followed by what amounted to “an invitation to the cemetery”.

UPDATE: The European Union should add more sanctions on North Korea as part of international pressure following Pyongyang’s largest nuclear test to date, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Thursday.

UPDATE: China said on Thursday it had lodged stern representations with South Korea for installing the four remaining launchers of the U.S. anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on a former golf course.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang made the comment at a regular press briefing.

UPDATE: China said on Thursday that it agreed the U.N. Security Council should make a further response on North Korea.

Sanctions were only half the solution and must be combined with dialogue and negotiation, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters.

The United States asked the U.N. to impose an oil embargo after North Korea’s latest and biggest nuclear test.

UPDATE: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had shown the desire to defuse tensions over North Korea.

Putin said that whipping up military hysteria around the North Korean crisis was counterproductive, adding that Pyongyang would not end its nuclear and missile programmes because it views them as its only means for self-defence.

“It’s impossible to scare them,” Putin said at an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.

He said that, as an incentive to freeze its weapons programmes, North Korea was being offered the prospect of an end to sanctions. But the economic benefits of that, in Pyongyang’s eyes, are outweighed by the security risks.

“We are telling them that we will not impose sanctions, which means you will live better, you will have more good and tasty food on the table, you will dress better, but the next step, they think, is an invitation to the cemetery. And they will never agree with this.”

Speaking at an economic forum in the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok, Moon said those leaders need to discuss proposed new sanctions on North Korea, which he said were intended to achieve a diplomatic solution to the crisis.