Russian President Vladimir Putin has told North Korean leader Kim Jongun that the two countries will expand bilateral ties with “joint efforts,” Pyongyang state media reported Monday.
In a letter to Kim to mark Korea’s Liberation Day which commemorates the end of Japanese colonial rule Putin emphasized that the two countries share a tradition of friendship and bilateral cooperation, according to North Korea’s KCNA news agency.
The Russian leader said closer ties are in the interests of both North Korea and Russia and would help strengthen the security and stability of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia, according to the KCNA.
Largely isolated North Korea has declared its support for Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
In July, after Russia and Syria, North Korea recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine and supported by Moscow as independent states. The move prompted Kyiv to sever diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.
North Korean officials have raised the possibility of workers being sent from the country to areas in eastern Ukraine to help with construction and other activities.
Kim also praises the bilateral cooperation
According to KCNA, Kim also sent a letter to Putin claiming that the friendship between the two countries in World War II was sealed with the Allied victory over Japan, which had occupied the Korean peninsula.
Since then, the “strategic and tactical cooperation, support and solidarity” between Russia and North Korea in their joint efforts to thwart threats and provocations by enemy forces has reached a new level, Kim said in the letter. KCNA has not identified such hostile forces, but commonly uses the term to refer to the United States and its allies.
Kim predicted that bilateral cooperation would grow “in all areas,” based on an agreement signed at his 2019 meeting with Putin.
2 of 2 Vladimir Putin at a meeting with Russian lawmakers, July 7, 2022 — Photo: Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via Portal
Vladimir Putin at a meeting with Russian lawmakers, July 7, 2022 — Photo: Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via Portal
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