Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, plans to travel to Russia this month to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the New York Times. During the meeting, the supply of weapons to Russia for Pyongyang’s invasion of Ukraine as well as other forms of military cooperation will be discussed, the newspaper reported, citing US and allied sources. Although the American newspaper does not give details of the meeting, it does say that Kim would likely travel from Pyongyang to Vladivostok on an armored train.
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He would not visit Moscow: he would meet with the Russian president in the aforementioned city on Russia’s Pacific coast. An economic forum will take place there from September 10th to 13th at the Far Eastern Federal University of Vladivostok, an event that the North Korean leader took part in on his last trip to the country in April 2019. Kim was also scheduled to visit the dock where the Russian Pacific Fleet is stationed.
Relations between Russia and North Korea have been getting increasingly closer for some time. A relationship reinvigorated by the invasion of Ukraine and Pyongyang’s international isolation. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has repeatedly warned against this proximity. When Kirby claimed last week that Putin and Kim exchanged correspondence; A month ago, the spokesman said that Moscow had asked Pyongyang to supply it with ammunition to maintain its offensive in Ukraine, as sanctions imposed by the allies against Russia made it difficult, although not impossible, to obtain weapons.
The request for military assistance was made personally by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was in Pyongyang in July and was invited to the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the armistice in the Korean War (1950-53). A delegation from Beijing also took part, led by Li Hongzhong, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
During his visit to North Korea, Shoigu met with Kim – the grandson of Kim Jong-il, a communist leader who fought a multinational force commanded by the United States with the support of the Soviet Union and China – and suggested conducting joint naval maneuvers , to which China would also be invited, as the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported on Monday, citing South Korean intelligence sources. For his part, the Russian ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora, told the Tass news agency that he knew nothing about these three-way maneuvers. Still, he described them as “appropriate,” Portal reports.
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South Korean espionage had also warned that Shoigu’s private meeting with Kim was aimed at increasing military cooperation. The two toured a weapons exhibition and had a “friendly conversation” as they walked among missiles and discussed “world trends,” according to North Korea’s official news agency. Kim “repeatedly expressed his belief that the Russian army and people would achieve great success in the struggle to build a powerful country.”
The United States and South Korea are actively cooperating and conducting military exercises, which North Korea sees as preparation for an attack on the country. On August 18, US President Joe Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at Camp David to usher in, as they declared, “a new era of trilateral cooperation.” Biden has used the improving complex relationship between Seoul and Tokyo to build a common front against North Korea but also to undermine China’s hegemony in Asia. At that meeting, the three leaders agreed on security arrangements that have raised Beijing’s concerns.
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