Seoul will provide Kyiv with a $2.3 billion medium- and long-term aid package starting this year, and will also offer $12 million for the rehabilitation of wounded Ukrainian soldiers through the NATO Trust Fund for Ukraine.
This was announced by Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul at a meeting in Brussels with representatives of NATO's Indo-Pacific partner countries, South Korea's news agency reported.
Another topic of the meeting was military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, the South Korean Foreign Ministry's press service reported.
According to Cho, "North Korea's support with Russian weapons affects the security of not only Europe but also the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific region".
Moscow's transfer of military technology and oil supplies to Pyongyang threaten the global non-proliferation regime, the agency quoted the head of South Korean diplomacy as saying.
In addition, Cho criticised the fact that Russia vetoed the extension of the mandate of the group monitoring compliance with the UN sanctions regime imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programmes in late March. The South Korean minister compared the move to "destroying a surveillance camera to prevent the arrest of a criminal," the Seoul Foreign Ministry's press service said.
At the end of March, it became known that South Korea and the United States were discussing the possibility of blocking oil supplies to the DPRK, which violates UN sanctions, and created a new working group for this purpose.
"Oil is an important resource for North Korea's nuclear and missile development and military power. Seoul and Washington are concerned about the possible supply of Russian oil to the DPRK," the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the subject.
Background. It was also reported that the United States is calling on South Korea to tighten control over chip exports to China. Biden's team wants Seoul to adopt the same technology restrictions as the United States.