Russia shipped more than 165,000 barrels of refined petroleum to North Korea in March in defiance of U.N. sanctions as the two countries have been forging closer relations, a senior White House official said Thursday. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Russian shipments have already topped North Korea’s annual import cap mandated by the U.N. Security Council. North Korea is banned from importing more than 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products a year under U.N. sanctions, approved in 2017 over Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests. “Given the close proximi…