US accuses North Korea of delivering arms to Russia's Wagner Group

Washington [US], December 23 (ANI): The White House on Thursday (local time) accused a private Russian military company, the Wagner Group, of taking delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, reported The Straits Times.
The delivery shows a sign of the group's expanding role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The White House called the group a 'rival' for power to the defence and other ministries at Kremlin.
The Russian and North Korean missions to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment, reported The Sydney Morning Herald.
Responding to the delivery, the White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby said the US will boost sanctions on the Wagner group following North Korea's sale of infantry rockets and missiles last month, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
"Wagner is searching around the world for arms suppliers to support its military operations in Ukraine," Kirby told reporters.
"We can confirm that North Korea has completed an initial arms delivery to Wagner, which paid for that equipment," he said.
Kirby further stated that the Wagner group, which is independent of the Russian defence establishment and is leading a bloody siege of Bakhmut, Ukraine, is spending more than USD 100 million a month on its Ukraine operations, reported The Straits Times.
Ukraine has come under repeated Russian aerial strikes targeting its energy infrastructure in recent weeks, leaving millions without power or running water in the dead of winter.
Russian forces hold almost all of Luhansk but only around 60 per cent of Donetsk, both in the east.
Since August, they have been bogged down in a costly, extended fight for Bakhmut, a Donetsk region industrial town with a pre-war population of some 70,000.
Moscow proclaimed it had annexed four provinces of Ukraine -- Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson -- after holding so-called referendums in September that were rejected as bogus and illegal by Kyiv and the West.
Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov said on Thursday the frontline in Ukraine was stable, and that Moscow's forces had concentrated on "completing the liberation of the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic".
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited army units fighting in Ukraine, state-owned news agency RIA reported on Thursday, citing the ministry. It did not say where. (ANI)