Kim Jong Un is expected to meet Vladimir Putin, according to North Korea’s KCNA news agency. Kim is most likely traveling on a private activity (one used in previous trips) that has been dormant on the North Korean side of the border.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will stop in Russia, the two countries said on Monday, and is expected to hold a much-anticipated meeting with President Vladimir Putin, who has raised Western considerations on a conceivable arms deal for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
A report on the Kremlin’s online page said the stopover was at Putin’s invitation and that he would take a position “in the coming days. “This was also reported through North Korea’s official news agency, which said the leaders would meet, without specifying when or where.
“Respectable Comrade Kim Jong Un will meet and hold talks with Comrade Putin during the visit,” they said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said delegations from the two countries would meet but did not verify plans for a bilateral consultation between Putin and Kim, saying the leaders would meet one-on-one “if necessary. “Being Mr. S. S. Kim since the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced North Korea to impose strict border controls for more than three years on its failed fitness system. Even as Mr. Kim has been more comfortable with planes than his notoriously hostile father, he has also used his non-public exercise in past meetings with Kim Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and former U. S. President Donald Trump, reviving a symbol of his family’s dynastic reign.
Associated Press journalists near the border between North Korea and Russia saw a green exercise with yellow borders, similar to the one used by the lone M. Kim on previous trips, at an exercise station on the North Korean side of a border river.
It is unclear whether Kim is aboard the train, which travels between the station and the track to the bridge connecting the two countries. He hadn’t crossed the bridge until 7 p. m.
Citing unnamed South Korean government sources, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the exercise likely left Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, on Sunday afternoon and that a meeting between Kim and Putin would be imaginable as early as Tuesday.
Yonhap news agency and other media outlets published information. Japanese news company Kyodo quoted Russian officials as saying Kim was likely heading to Russia on his private train.
South Korea’s presidential office, Defense Ministry and National Intelligence Service did not verify those details.
Last week, the United States released intelligence that North Korea and Russia were holding an assembly among their leaders to be held this month as they expand cooperation amid escalating confrontations with the United States.
One conceivable venue for the assembly would be the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, where Putin arrived on Monday to attend a foreign forum that will last until Wednesday, according to Russian news agency TASS. The city was also the meeting place of M. Putin with Kim in 2019. According to U. S. officials, Putin may focus on getting more North Korean artillery and other munitions to fill dwindling stockpiles as he seeks to reduce the intensity of the fighting. Ukrainian counteroffensive and demonstration that it is capable of waging a long war of attrition. This could lead to more pressure for the United States and its partners to continue negotiations as considerations mount about a protracted standoff despite their massive shipments of complex weapons. to Ukraine during the past 17 months.
North Korea most likely has tens of millions of Soviet-designed artillery and rocket shells that could potentially give a massive boost to the Russian military, analysts say.
In return, Kim could get much-needed energy and food aid, as well as complex weapons technology, adding intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-capable missile submarines and army reconnaissance satellites, analysts said.
Some fear that imaginable transfers of Russian generation may simply increase the risk posed by M. S. ‘s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles, designed to target the United States, South Korea and Japan.
After decades of complicated, hot and bloodless relations, Russia and North Korea have been growing closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This link is motivated by Putin and Kim’s efforts to establish ties between Russia and North Korea. the visibility of its partnerships with its classic allies Moscow and Beijing as it tries to break its diplomatic isolation and bring North Korea into a united front opposed to Washington.
While diverting the standoff in Ukraine to push for the advance of its weapons, North Korea has continually blamed Washington for the crisis in Ukraine, claiming that the West’s “hegemonic policy” justified a Russian offensive in Ukraine to protect itself.
North Korea is the only country, but also Russia and Syria, that recognizes the independence of two Russian-backed breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine – Donetsk and Luhansk – and has also alluded to its interest in sending structural personnel to those regions. Assistance with restructuring efforts.
Russia, as well as China, have blocked US-led efforts at the UN Security Council to tighten sanctions against North Korea over its intensified missile tests, while accusing Washington of escalating tensions with Pyongyang by expanding military training with South Korea and Japan.
Since last year, the United States has accused North Korea of supplying weapons to Russia, adding artillery shells sold to the Russian mercenary organization Wagner. Russian and North Korean officials have denied the allegations. But hypotheses about military cooperation between the two countries intensified after the Russian defense. Minister Sergei Shoigu made North Korea a little frequent in July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made North Korea a rare in July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made North Korea a rare in July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made North Korea a rare in July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made North Korea a rare in July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made North Korea a rare one in July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei TKim invited him to an arms show and a large army parade in the capital, where he showed intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to attack targets.
After the visit, Kim visited North Korea’s weapons factories, adding a facility that generates artillery systems, where he suggested personnel to boost progress and large-scale production of new types of munitions. Experts say Kim’s visits to factories likely had a double effect. Purpose: to inspire the modernization of North Korea’s armaments and read about artillery and other materials that could be exported to Russia.
Jon Finer, deputy national security adviser to U. S. President Joe Biden, told reporters Sunday that buying weapons from North Korea “may be the most productive and only option” open to Moscow as it tries to continue its war effort.
“We are seriously concerned about the option of North Korea selling weapons, or even more weapons, to the Russian military. It’s appealing to think for a moment about what he says: When Russia travels the world looking for partners who can help it, it lands in North Korea,” he said. Finer aboard a plane carrying Biden from India to Vietnam.
Some analysts say an imaginable meeting between Kim and Putin would have more to do with token gains than truly broad military cooperation.
Russia, which has kept its most important weapons technologies close, even in the face of key allies such as China, may be reluctant to make first-generation transfers with North Korea for what will likely be limited war materials transported via a small railway. link between countries, they say.
AP Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, and Dake Kang and Ng Han Guan in Fangchuan, China, contributed.
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