The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea and France will join the US to form the coalition, which would also contribute warships and military surveillance aircraft to better spot shipments to the North.

The coalition is the first unified international effort to monitor the ship traffic in the year since the Trump administration launched its “maximum-pressure” sanctions campaign, aimed at strong-arming North Korea into abandoning its nuclear and missile programs, despite international calls on Washington to ease pressure in response to Pyongyang efforts toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

During an event in Russian on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin criticized Washington for not taking a single step in response to Pyongyang’s several moves toward denuclearization.

Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Russia’s Far Eastern port city of Vladivosto, President Putin said North Korea, in return for taking a lot of steps toward denuclearization, “expects reciprocal steps and not endless demands for full disarmament.”