Yoon pledges more aid to Kyiv in surprise visit

KYIV/MOSCOW — South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday, demonstrating his country's cooperation with NATO amid the conflict with Russia.

Yoon's office said he traveled to Ukraine with his wife, Kim Keonhee, following trips to Lithuania for a NATO summit and to Poland. It is his first visit since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February last year.

South Korea, a key ally of the United States in Asia, joined Western sanctions against Russia and has provided Ukraine with humanitarian and financial support. But the Asian nation, a growing arms exporter, has not provided weapons to Ukraine in line with its long-standing policy of not supplying arms to countries actively engaged in conflict, The Associated Press reported.

Last year, the value of South Korea's arms sales jumped to more than $17 billion from $7.25 billion the year before, including a $13.7 billion arms deal with Poland — Seoul's biggest ever — supplying rocket launchers and fighter jets.

During a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Yoon announced plans to expand support shipments to Ukraine but did not touch upon weapons supplies.

This year, South Korea will increase shipments of nonlethal military items, such as body armor and helmets, and provide humanitarian aid worth $150 million, up from $100 million last year, Yoon said. The country has also sent demining equipment and other aid items that had been requested by Ukraine, he added.

Yoon said he and Zelensky agreed to cooperate on post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Ukraine.

Although not a NATO member, South Korea is considered a global partner of the military alliance like Japan and a handful of other countries. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Ukraine in March.

Yoon's visit came as India, which holds the current presidency of the G20, said on Saturday that brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine is beyond the remit of the G20, and such efforts will be best undertaken by the United Nations and through bilateral negotiations.

"Our view is that G20 is an economic forum, not a forum to discuss security issues," Amitabh Kant, India's G20 sherpa, told Reuters. A sherpa is a personal representative of the leader of a member country at an international summit.

'Era of dialogue'

"However, as (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi said during Bali (summit), this is not an era of war, but an era of dialogue and diplomacy," Kant said, referring to the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali in November.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Russia's security service, or FSB, said it had foiled assassination attempts on Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state-funded RT international television channel, and journalist and celebrity Ksenia Sobchak.

The FSB said on Friday it detained members of a neo-Nazi group called Paragraph-88 that it claimed had been recruited by the Ukrainian secret service to kill the two women.

Interfax news agency quoted the FSB as saying the detainees had admitted to preparing attacks on the two women on behalf of Ukraine and had been promised a reward of 1.5 million roubles ($16,620) for each one.

Russia has previously alleged that Ukrainian authorities were behind the killings of television commentator Darya Dugina and popular blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.

Agencies Via Xinhua