Moscow is against the idea of increasing sanctions pressure on North Korea amid the latest missile launch, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.

"We have repeatedly stressed that the sanctions pressure is essentially exhausted, and that all those resolutions that had imposed sanctions necessarily included demands to resume the political process, resume negotiations, and this is completely ignored by the US side. I think this is a big mistake," Lavrov told reporters.

The minister stressed that the latest actions of the US authorities were aimed at provoking North Korea.

"The recent actions of the United States seem to be aimed deliberately to provoke Pyongyang to commit new harsh actions. It seems that everything has been done specifically to ensure that [North Korean Leader] Kim Jong Un snapped and took another adventurous move," Lavrov said.

He added that Washington should say directly whether it was seeking to find a pretext for destroying North Korea.