North Korea criticized U.S. plans to deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea in a communication from their Russian embassy to Moscow, according to the Interfax news agency on April 22.

The DPRK took aim at U.S. logic for the deployment, calling it “absurd” while adding the plans had the potential to spark greater conflict in north-east Asia.

“(THAAD’s) extremely high altitude and technical specifications of its radar whose range exceeds 1,000 kilometers, thus going far beyond the Korean Peninsula, it comes clear that the U.S. logic of the ‘North Korean threat’ is absurd,” the statement, which was