In the past two days, Russian President Putin participated in the forum held by a senior think tank in Moscow . During the period, when talking about the current situation in Russia and Ukraine, it was particularly pointed to two countries. One was the United Kingdom, mainly talking about former British Prime Minister Trass. When he was running for the Prime Minister, he publicly said that Britain was ready to use the nuclear weapon .
Recently, the West accused Russia of nuclear threats to Europe and the United States. Putin said this, of course, to counter the NATO accusations.
The second is South Korea. Putin said that based on information possessed by Russia, South Korea has plans to provide weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, which will undermine the relationship between the two countries. As a warning, Putin also pointed to North Korea, giving an example, South Korea should consider what it would feel like if Russia resumes military cooperation with North Korea and provides advanced weapons to North Korea?
These words seem to be an example, but in fact they are an obvious warning, warning South Korea to take corresponding countermeasures if it still obeys the call of the United States and directly or indirectly provide weapons to Ukraine.
After Putin's warning, South Korean President Yong Seo-yeol became anxious and immediately came out to clarify that South Korea has provided Ukraine with helmets, medical supplies, Humanitarian Rescue and other things, and has no exported weapons.
So now the problem has become that Putin and Yoon Seok-yeol are having a dispute. So who is lying, or pretending to be confused with understanding?
First of all, from an objective perspective, there are so many allies in the United States, Putin did not mention other countries, but pointed out South Korea specifically, for of course there is a reason.
On the one hand, South Korea is still a "friendly country" of Russia. To put it bluntly, Russia believes that South Korea has little to do with this Russian-Ukrainian war. Although it is an ally of the United States, it is different from those European countries and is not involved in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The two sides still have room to maintain normal relations.
is more blunt, that is, Putin thinks South Korea is still "rescue", so he would like to remind him to avoid the deterioration of the relationship between the two sides to an irreversible level.
On the other hand, it is also related to South Korea's recent offside performance in the arms trade market. According to statistics from South Korea, in the first nine months of this year, South Korea's total foreign arms trade exceeded US$13 billion, creating 100,000 jobs, and driving the output value of 38 trillion won, which is about 200 billion yuan.
200 billion yuan of arms industry chain is actually not very bizarre for a major arms exporter like the United States and Russia, but it is completely different for a small country like South Korea.
On the one hand, before the Russian-Ukraine War, South Korea did not perform well in the international arms market. However, after the Russian-Ukraine War, its arms trade orders increased sharply, becoming the top 10 arms trade powers in the world. If it weren’t for exporting weapons to Ukraine, how did so much arms trade come about?
From this perspective, Russia's accusations against South Korea still make some sense.
On the other hand, from South Korea's perspective, Yoon Seok-yeol, as the president of South Korea, publicly responded to Putin's allegations. What he said may not be true, but he is definitely not afraid of international investigations or has a way to reject Russia's accusations. Otherwise, once Russia publishes tangible evidence, it is not only the problem of the breakdown of relations between Russia and South Korea, but the personal political prestige of the president, Yoon Seok-yeol, will go bankrupt.
In other words, South Korea has not sold weapons and ammunition to Ukraine at least on the surface. This should be true and can withstand Russia's suspicion. Otherwise, South Korea would not be able to take this risk, and Yoon Seo-young would not be able to bear the historical responsibility of prompting Russia to provide weapons to North Korea.
So the question is, Russia's allegations are well documented, and South Korea's clarification does not seem to be fake. Neither side lies. Where is the conflict?
Perhaps the truth about this matter can be seen from the arms trade between South Korea and Poland since this year.
According to Yonhap News Agency recently reported that South Korea's arms exports this year were 400% of previous years. The reason for such a great improvement is largely because Poland imported a large number of main battle tanks, self-propelled artillery , and light fighter from South Korea.
As we all know, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, among the member states of the EU, Poland was the most active country to provide weapons to Ukraine. Previously, the EU held an internal meeting to pay for military equipment to aid Ukraine. Among the bills reported by various countries, Poland alone had 4.5 billion euros , accounting for about 50% of the entire aid bill.
Then there is reason to suspect that South Korea exports weapons to Poland, and Poland turns to aid weapons to Ukraine.
Not to mention whether Poland directly assisted the weapons purchased from South Korea to Ukraine. Even if Poland did not do this, it was just giving all its old Soviet equipment to Ukraine, and then using the funds from European and American aid to replace more advanced equipment from South Korea. From the perspective of effect, it is also indirectly involved in this conflict, and it is no different.
More importantly, Poland dares not directly give equipment imported from South Korea to Ukraine, but do they dare not? Therefore, Russia's accusations are not groundless, but South Korea is likely to have done a relatively clean "book" and is not afraid of investigation.
But to this extent, evidence is actually not so important. If Russia really feels that South Korea has helped Ukraine and participated in this conflict, will it still take into account any evidence? It can only be said that Putin's restraint is actually deliberately "reminding" South Korea and does not want to make Russia-South Korea relations too ugly.
