Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning that ramped-up military pressure on North Korea could lead to large-scale suffering worldwide.

Speaking at the BRICS summit in China on Tuesday, Putin argued that Pyongyang is unlikely to bow to pressure from the West, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un believes his nuclear missile program is the best way to ensure the isolated nation’s security.

“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless — it’s a dead end,” Putin said, according to reports. “It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”

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The Russian leader also said tougher sanctions, as sought by the U.S., would be “useless.”

“[North Korea would] rather eat grass than give up their nuclear program,” Putin said, the BBC reported.

Tensions in the region escalated over the weekend after North Korea boasted of “perfect success” in the test of a hydrogen bomb for an ICBM. South Korean officials believe the regime is also preparing another intercontinental ballistic-missile launch, possibly as early as this week.

The latest in Pyongyang’s series of missile and bomb tests has hardened the rhetoric from the U.S., with Defense Secretary James Mattis warning North Korea that it will be met “with a massive military response” if it attacks the U.S., Japan or South Korea, while Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, observed at a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting that Kim Jong Un was “begging for war.”

Putin’s comments also stand in contrast to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened to unleash “fire and fury” if North Korea steps up its provocation. When asked about Trump at the BRICS summit, Putin reportedly said the U.S. president is “not my bride, and I am not his groom,” in another sign of cooling for a relationship once dubbed a “bromance.”