North Korea says it's speeding up the building of its nuclear weapons arsenal to counter threats from "hostile nuclear weapons states," like the United States. "The nuclear threat of United States against [North Korea] has already reached critical point in terms of its scale and danger,

President Vladimir Putin suggested on Thursday that Russia could hold military drills with North Korea. "We'll see. We could also conduct exercises. Why not?," Putin said, when asked whether Moscow would conduct joint military drills with Pyongyang.