Tag: Russia

It will be interesting to see if this ruling leads to more Russian men trying to seek asylum in South Korea:

A local court on Tuesday ordered the Incheon Immigration Office to review refugee applications submitted by two Russian men who landed in Incheon International Airport last year after fleeing the military draft in their home country.

The Incheon District Court ruled in favor of the Russian men who filed complaints against the immigration authority, but dismissed a complaint filed by another man who was in a similar situation. 

The judge did not give a detailed explanation about the ruling during the hearing, saying that a detailed verdict will be issued later.

There are two more Russian men ― college student Vladimir Maraktaev and former football player Dzhashar Khubiev ― who are still stuck inside the airport waiting for their next hearing scheduled for late February.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Here is the least surprising news of the day:

North Korea continues to provide ammunition to Russia in support of Moscow’s unprovoked war against Ukraine, a White House official said Friday, calling it a clear violation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions on Pyongyang.

John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, said the U.S. has shared its intelligence on the delivery of North Korean ammunition to Russia with the UNSC Panel of Experts on North Korea sanctions.

The NSC official earlier said the North has delivered ammunition to a private Russian military company, the Wagner Group, for use in Ukraine.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but by transferring the ammunition to the Wagner Group it allows North Korea and Russia to claim that ammunition is not being transferred between the two governments when in fact it is.

The Russians continue to make themselves look like clowns:

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and a senior security official in President Vladimir Putin’s administration, said Saturday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida should perform a ritualistic suicide by disembowelment to repent for what Medvedev called servitude to the United States.

Medvedev’s remarks were in response to a joint statement Friday by President Joe Biden and Kishida, in which the leaders said that “any use of a nuclear weapon by Russia in Ukraine would be an act of hostility against humanity and unjustifiable in any way.”

Russian military leaders have discussed the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon should their invasion of Ukraine face more setbacks.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

At least these Russian men found a good airport to be stranded in:

“I left home the night of Sept. 24, a few hours after I received the conscription notice. I decided to leave as soon as possible because they might come to get me in the morning,” he said during a recent interview with The Korea Times at the airport.

“I find it nothing to be ashamed of to defend my country. I would volunteer (to fight) if someone attacks us and put my loved ones in danger,” said Maraktaev, adding that he already completed the compulsory one-year of military service in 2019. “But it’s a totally different story when my own country is the aggressor. I will never take weapons to go and kill innocent people in Ukraine.”

That night, Maraktaev jumped into a car with others in the neighborhood who were also called up to join the army. They crossed the border to Mongolia and drove further to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. From there, Maraktaev took a flight to Manila in the Philippines, where he was able to stay for several weeks.

He then bought a plane ticket to Incheon and landed on Korean soil on Nov. 12, expecting the country to be a haven from war. 

Korea Times

Here is the reason he decided to flee to South Korea:

“Although I don’t have any connections with South Korea, I knew that it is a very developed country in terms of democracy and civil rights,” he said, when asked why he specifically chose to flee to Korea. “The news that a former (Korean) president was sentenced to prison for corruption crimes blew my mind. We could never imagine a leader facing trial in Russia.”

He is one of five Russian men currently stuck at the airport who currently going through asylum proceedings. According to the article it is not looking positive to have their asylum cases approved.

I have hard time believing that Russia was ever going to “attack” Japan like this Newsweek report is claiming. An attack on Japan would trigger the US-Japan alliance which would lead to an overwhelming military response that would crush whatever attack Russia launched. With that all said, after what we have seen of the Russian performance in Ukraine, the Japanese military could probably defeat any Russian attack without American assistance:

Russia was preparing to attack Japan in the summer of 2021, months before President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an email featuring a letter from a whistleblower at Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), shared with Newsweek, reveals.

The email, dated March 17, was sent by the agent, dubbed the Wind of Change, to Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human-rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net, and is now exiled in France.

The FSB agent writes regular dispatches to Osechkin, revealing the anger and discontent inside the service over the war that began when Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24.

Newsweek

You can read more at the link, but what I can believe is that Russia may have been determining the likelihood of succeeding with a provocation against Japan such as sinking one of its naval ships. This would put Japan in tough spot because their constitution would not allow them to undertake offensive operations and thus the Japanese government would turn to the U.S. for support.

This would also put the U.S. in a tough spot because the Biden administration would have to determine if taking offensive action against Russia is worth it in response to a sunken Japanese ship. Putin would likely bet no offensive military action would be taken and instead toothless sanctions and sternly worded letters would be issued. The lack of a response from the U.S. would have put a strain on the U.S.-Japan alliance which is what their ultimate goal may have been. Additionally sinking a Japanese ship would be a morale boost for the Russian Pacific Fleet. I wonder if Putin wishes he would have initiated a provocation against Japan instead of his current disastrous war in Ukraine?

This is nothing new because both countries have conducted these joint flights before, but still this is not a very neighborly thing to do threatening your neighbors like this:

Two Chinese and six Russian warplanes entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone (KADIZ) without notice Wednesday, prompting the Air Force to scramble fighters to the scene, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The planes’ entry into the KADIZ came as South Korea is pushing to strengthen its alliance with the United States amid an intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry, while maintaining its opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The JCS said the warplanes flew across the KADIZ but did not violate South Korea’s territorial air.

At 5:48 a.m., two Chinese H-6 bombers flew into the KADIZ from an area 126 kilometers northwest of Ieo Islet, a submerged rock south of the southern island of Jeju, and they left the KADIZ at 6:13 a.m.

At 6:44 a.m., the bombers reentered the KADIZ from an area northeast of South Korea’s southern port city of Pohang and exited the zone at 7:07 a.m.

Then six Russian aircraft — four TU-95 bombers and two SU-35 fighters — as well as two Chinese H-6 bombers flew into the KADIZ from an area 200 km northeast of the South’s Ulleung Island at 12:18 p.m. and exited the zone at 12:36 p.m.

The two countries appeared to have engaged in a combined air exercise, observers said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

South Korea has joined with the vast majority of the world to condemn Russia’s attempted annexation of territory within Ukraine:

The South Korean government said Saturday it does not recognize Russia’s recent annexation of Ukrainian territory as legitimate while strongly condemning Moscow’s invasion of the eastern European country.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to annex four regions in Ukraine, following referendums in the territory late last month.

“The Korean government strongly condemns Russia’s armed invasion against Ukraine as a violation of the principles of the U.N. Charter,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk said in a statement.

“The Korean government does not recognize the referenda held in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson and Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory as legitimate.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but areas that Russia is claiming in this annexation have already been liberated by Ukraine. This includes Russia’s embarrassing defeat this weekend in the logistical hub of Lyman.