RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has warned the standoff between North Korea and the United States is close to spilling into a large-scale conflict, saying it’s a mistake to try to pressure Pyongyang into halting its nuclear missile program.

Putin, due to attend a summit of the BRICS nations in China next week, said on Friday the only way to de-escalate tensions was via talks, and Sergei Lavrov, his foreign minister, said Washington not Pyongyang should take the initiative on that.

“Provocations, pressure, and bellicose and offensive rhetoric is the road to nowhere,” Putin, whose country shares a border with North Korea, wrote on the Kremlin’s website.

The Russian leader, whose nuclear-capable bombers recently overflew the Korean Peninsula in a show of force, said the situation had deteriorated so badly that it was now “balanced on the verge of a large-scale conflict”.

Pyongyang has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and recently threatened to land missiles near the US Pacific territory of Guam.

On Monday, North Korea, which sees joint war games between the United States and South Korea as preparations for invasion, raised the stakes by firing an intermediate-range missile over Japan.

A road map formulated by Moscow and Beijing, which would involve North Korea halting its missile program in exchange for the United States and South Korea stopping large-scale war games, was a way to reduce tensions, wrote Putin.

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