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Russia urges US, South Korea to revise decision on THAAD anti-missile system deployment

According to the Russian deputy foreign minister, such decision is an "additional destabilizing factor in the region"

UNITED NATIONS, April 28. /TASS/. Russia is urging the United States and South Korea to revise a decision on deploying the THAAD anti-missile system, which is an ‘additional destabilizing factor in the region,’ Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said at a UN Security Council session on Friday.

As the Russian diplomat said, Moscow has warned more than once that the decision on the deployment of the THAAD system made "in line with the vicious logic of creating a global missile shield" undermines "the existing military balance in the region, threatening the security of adjacent states."

"It is not only we who perceived this step very negatively. We are once again urging both the United States and the Republic of Korea to re-consider its expediency and other regional states not to yield to the temptation of joining such destabilizing efforts," the deputy foreign minister said.

As the Russian diplomat noted, Moscow is alarmed by dangerous developments in the region and is denouncing Pyongyang’s provocative nuclear and missile activity, which "has assumed dangerous dynamics" over the past 18 months.

"We are urging the North Korean authorities to halt their banned programs and return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the IAEA’s [International Atomic Energy Agency] control," the Russian diplomat said.

At the same time, the Russian deputy foreign minister urged participants in the UN Security Council discussion to be aware that North Korea "will hardly give up nuclear weapons as long as it feels direct threat to its security."

"This is precisely how North Koreans qualify regular large-scale maneuvers and drills by the United States and its allies in the region, and also the dispatch to that region of a US naval armada as we witnessed this month," Gatilov said.

The ground-based THAAD anti-missile system is designed to intercept the warheads of ballistic missiles at the end of the mid-course phase and upon approach to the target, and also to protect the troops of the United States and its allies, cities and important facilities against both short-range and strategic missiles.

"In an interview with Reuters news agency on April 27, US President Donald Trump said that the THAAD system was phenomenal as "it shoots missiles right out of the sky."