The DPRK is not really a communist nation, but more like a cult of personality kingdom where even life in restrictive China or socialist (and failing) Venezuela would be far more desirable. Just the same, at least on paper, North Korea is a communist country. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is an ex-KGB agent and today’s news about him flying war planes over the Korean peninsula as the U.S. war games with South Korea shows that his real leanings are still towards communism.

The Conservative Tribune writes that “nuclear-capable Russian bombers flew a mission around the Korean Peninsula,” and the Russian taunt was “apparently taken in response to joint U.S.-South Korean military drills this week.” The breathtakingly bad stance happens just as the North Korean powder keg threatens to escalate.

Not only did “the new Soviet Union” fly a bomber over the area, we are told also that “Russian fighter escorts and aircraft with intelligence-gathering capabilities were also involved.”

This matters because if the U.S. did this when Russia war gamed with someone (which they do), Putin would find himself ill used. He may be a man of strength when he acts but he is quite the crybaby when anyone reacts and does it back.

As if they were blind to the yearly exercises between the U.S. and South Korea (which admittedly are not themselves productive to peace), the Russian Defense Ministry played dumb and said, “Our long-range aviation pilots, according to an established plan, regularly carry out flights over neutral waters over the Atlantic, the Arctic, the Black Sea and the Pacific Ocean from their bases and from tactical airfields.”

This gets quite worrisome in another way, too. South Korea said that Russia violated its airspace and did NOT stay within the legal borders for such surveillance. “As the Russian aircraft entered the KADIZ (Korea Air Defense Identification Zone) in formation yesterday morning, a squadron of our Air Force jets made an emergency sorties,” said one who South Korea’s Yonhap new agency calls an “anonymous source in the government.”

Russia complained about the drills on the same day of this provocation and their foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a briefing, “The U.S. and South Korea holding yet more large-scale military and naval exercises does not help reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”

She added, “We urge all sides to exercise maximum caution. Given the arms build-up in the region, any rash move or even an unintended incident could spark a military conflict.”

To this, the Tribune reminds us that “the U.S.-South Korea exercises had been planned for quite some time — long before things began becoming exceptionally testy on the Korean Peninsula.” China has said that drills ARE the reason for the aggression, but while they don’t help the situation any, they are in NO WAY the cause of Kim Jong-un’s madness.

If the war games with South Korea stop, would North Korea stop executing prisoners or kidnapping Malaysians? Would the Hermit Kingdom stop launching bomb tests in international shipping lanes? For that matter, would China stop acting in a way that makes the U.S. feel uneasy and in need of such tests?

That too is part of peace and America first. That can not be forgotten. After that is addressed, then perhaps we need to halt these games. Not before.

Sources: The Conservative Tribune – Reuters