Following UN veto, Russia says big powers need to stop ‘strangling’ North Korea

Nine held in Tajikistan for Russia concert hall attack MOSCOW

Nine persons have been detained by Tajikistan over suspected contact with the perpetrators of last week’s attack by gunmen on a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed 144 people, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said on Friday.

Those detained are also suspected of having connections with the Islamic State group.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Thursday it had detained another suspect in relation to the raid on Crocus City Hall, on suspicion of being involved in financing the attack. It did not give further details of the suspect.

Russia said on Friday that major powers needed a new approach to North Korea, accusing the U.S. and its allies of ratcheting up military tensions in Asia and seeking to “strangle” the reclusive state.

Russia vetoed the annual renewal of a panel of experts monitoring enforcement of longstanding United Nations sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

Moscow’s move, which strikes a blow at the enforcement of a myriad of UN sanctions imposed after

Pyongyang carried out its first nuclear test in 2006, underscores the dividend that Kim Jong-un has earned by moving closer to President Vladimir Putin amid the war in Ukraine.

‘Old templates’

“It is obvious to us that the UN Security Council can no longer use old templates in relation to the problems of the Korean Peninsula,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman

Maria Zakharova said.

Ms. Zakharova said the U.S. was stoking military tensions, that international restrictions had not improved the security situation and that there were severe humanitarian consequences for the population of North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The U.S. State Department said on Thursday that Russia’s veto had “cynically undermined international peace and security” and accused Moscow of seeking to bury reporting by the panel of experts on its own “collusion” with North Korea to get weapons.

Russia had vetoed the annual renewal of sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear programmes