North Korea issued a statement branding the U.S. as an “evil empire” responsible for the war in Ukraine and repeating its support for Russia on Thursday, the eve of the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion.

“The hegemonic policy pursued by the U.S. and the West … compelled Russia to start preemptive military actions to fundamentally remove the external military threats to it,” international affairs critic Kim Yu Chol said in a commentary published by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday.

Claiming that NATO’s “advance into the East” is aimed at “encircling” and weakening Russia, Kim said that