Moscow Says Activities of UN Group of Experts on North Korea Not Impartial

The activities of the UN group of experts overseeing sanctions on North Korea cannot be called impartial, since their goal was to compromise Pyongyang, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

On Thursday, Russia vetoed a US draft resolution on extending the mandate of experts of the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea until April 30, 2025. Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said later that Moscow could not support the resolution because sanctions on North Korea had proven ineffective and only harmed ordinary people. 

"The goal of the group of experts, which cannot be called independent and impartial, was not to resolve issues of maintaining international and regional security, but to compromise Pyongyang and discredit our friends from North Korea," Zakharova said in a statement on Saturday.
She also added that UN experts "have not been able to properly assess the scale of the blow that UN Security Council sanctions directly or indirectly inflict on ordinary people."