The United States has blacklisted a network accused of aiding financial payments between Russia and North Korea, two isolated countries that have grown financially and militarily closer amid the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.

The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on a network of five groups and one person, based in Russia and the Georgian region of South Ossetia, for enabling payments between Russia and North Korea,

"The U.S. remains strongly committed to leveraging all our available tools to disrupt this and other schemes intended to support Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and enable (North Korea's) illicit access to the international financial system,