Seoul:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he plans to lift relations with North Korea to a higher level and pledged his unwavering support, Pyongyang’s state media KCNA reported on Tuesday ahead of his planned visit to the country.

In a letter published in North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, a ruling Workers’ Party mouthpiece, Putin said the two countries have developed good relations and partnerships over the past 70 years based on equality, mutual respect and trust.

Putin thanked North Korea for supporting what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine, and vowed support for Pyongyang’s efforts to defend its interests despite what he called “U.S. pressure, blackmail and military threats.”

The article was published a day after the two countries announced that Putin will visit North Korea for the first time in 24 years for two days starting on Tuesday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Seoul:

Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to North Korea on Tuesday to meet with leader Kim Jong Un in a high-profile visit that will showcase their deepening ties.

AFP takes a look at what we know:

Why are North Korea and Russia friends?

When it was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, North Korea became close to the Soviet Union.

The USSR’s collapse in 1991 left North Korea without a key benefactor, which helped trigger a widespread famine later that decade.

In 2000, shortly after he became president, Putin sought to renew ties, visiting Pyongyang to meet Kim’s father, then-leader Kim Jong Il — becoming the first Russian leader to do so.

Still, in the mid-2000s, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia supported UN sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear programme.

When Kim Jong Un took over from his father in 2011, he initially tried to strike a balance between Russia and North Korea’s other key historic ally, China.

But Russia and North Korea have since drawn closer, with Moscow forgiving most of its ally’s debt in 2012, and Kim travelling to Vladivostok near the border in 2019 to meet Putin.

Why visit now?

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has become increasingly isolated, and is looking for friends, experts say.

Last year, Kim made a rare overseas trip on his bulletproof train to meet Putin at a Russian spaceport.

South Korea, the United States and Ukraine claimed North Korea was shipping weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine, violating rafts of UN sanctions, in return for technical help with its nascent satellite programme.

North Korea has denied this, calling the claim “absurd” — even as it thanked Russia for using its UN veto in March to effectively end monitoring of sanctions violations, just as the UN experts were starting to probe alleged arms transfers.

Kim has also ramped up weapons testing, including a flurry of launches this year of cruise missiles, which analysts said North Korea could be supplying to Russia for use in Ukraine.

“During the Cold War, North Korea was always in a position to ask Russia for military and economic assistance,” Cheong Seong-chang, of the Seoul-based Sejong Institute, told AFP.

The two countries are “cooperating equally” for the first time, said Cheong, adding it was something of a “honeymoon period” for them.

What’s in it for Kim?

For Kim “this visit is a victory”, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

A summit with Putin will both “upgrade” North Korea’s status internationally and “bolster Kim’s domestic legitimacy”, he said, adding that while Russia could not replace China economically, it showed that “Pyongyang has options”.

Kim is expected to greet Putin in person at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport, likely accompanied by Kim Yo Jong, his powerful sister, and his teenage daughter Kim Ju Ae — who many experts speculate could be North Korea’s next ruler.

South Korean news agency Yonhap said that satellite images showed possible signs of a “large structure” being installed in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square — potentially indicating preparations for a major event or parade were under way.

And the outcomes?

Citing a Kremlin aide, Russian agencies said Monday the two leaders will sign “important documents” during the visit.

This may include a “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty” which will outline future co-operation and deal with “security issues”, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying by state-run Russian news agencies.

“North Korea is placing its highest priority on relations with Russia and Russia is reciprocating,” the Sejong Institute’s Cheong said.

“It is expected that cooperation between the two countries in the military and economic sectors will expand.”

What’s next?

Ahead of the visit, North Korea has not conducted any major weapons tests — or floated trash-filled balloons into South Korea in revenge for similar missives sent northwards by activists, as it has in recent days.

But the calm will not last long, Cheong said.

Emboldened by Putin’s visit, Kim is likely to “switch to a hard-line mode against the South after Putin leaves”.

Experts have said that during Putin’s visit, North Korea will likely push to export more war materials for use in Ukraine, in exchange for importing food and energy from Russia.

“For now at least, Putin’s war in Ukraine sets up an ‘axis of transactionalism’ among sanctions violators looking to trade yesterday’s weapons for today’s military technology,” Ewha University’s Easley said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attend the talks in Pyongyang, North Korea, on October 19, 2023.
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service telegram channel via AP

Russia’s Foreign Minister proposed regular security talks with North Korea and China to deal with what he described as increasing U.S.-led regional military threats, as he met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his top diplomat on October 19 during a visit to Pyongyang.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in North Korea’s capital on October 20 on a two-day trip expected to focus on how to boost the two countries’ defence ties following a September summit between Mr. Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Last week, the United States said North Korea had transferred munitions to Russia to boost its fighting capabilities in Ukraine in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban any weapons trading involving North Korea.

On October 19, Mr. Lavrov met Mr. Kim for talks that lasted about an hour, Russia’s state-run Tass news agency reported, without elaborating. Mr. Lavrov met his North Korean counterpart, Choe Son Hui, earlier on October 19 and lauded deepening bilateral cooperation.

The Lavrov-Kim meeting “means that the recent fleet of containers likely caring munitions from North Korea to Russia was not the last Kim-Putin transaction the world has to worry about,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul.

“After accepting Pyongyang’s help to resupply the illegal invasion of Ukraine, Moscow is set to commit further violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions by providing North Korea with weapons technology that could threaten stability in East Asia,” Mr. Easley said.

More details of Mr. Lavrov’s meetings with Mr. Kim and Ms. Choe weren’t immediately available. But Tass quoted Mr. Lavrov as telling reporters that he supports holding regular talks on security issues on the Korean Peninsula with North Korea and China.

“The United States, Japan and South Korea intensifying military activity here and Washington working toward moving strategic infrastructure, including nuclear aspects, here, are of great concern to us and our North Korean friends,” Mr. Lavrov said, according to Tass. “We oppose this unconstructive and dangerous policy with a course toward de-escalation and inadmissibility of escalating tensions here.”

The recent flurry of diplomacy between Russia and North Korea underscores how their interests are aligning in the face of their separate, intensifying confrontations with the United States — North Korea over its advancing nuclear program and Russia over its war with Ukraine.

The U.S. has been expanding regular military drills with South Korea and temporarily deploying more powerful military assets around the Korean Peninsula in response to North Korea’s barrage of missile tests since last year. The U.S. and South Korea have also resumed some trilateral military exercises with Japan.

The focus of outside attention during Mr. Lavrov’s visit is whether the two countries will provide any hints of how they will solidify their security cooperation or announce the timing of Mr. Putin’s promised trip to Pyongyang to reciprocate Mr. Kim’s visit to Russia’s Far East.

During his travel to Russia, Mr. Kim met Mr. Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s most important domestic space launch centre, and inspected other key Russian weapon-making sites. That triggered intense speculation that Mr. Kim seeks sophisticated Russian technologies to modernize his nuclear arsenal in return for supplying conventional arms to refill Russia’s declining weapons inventory. Neither Russia nor North Korea has disclosed what Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim agreed to during the summit.

“After the historic summit between President Putin and Chairman of State Affairs Kim Jong Un at the Vostochny Cosmodrome on September 13, we can confidently say that the relations have reached a qualitatively new strategic level,” Mr. Lavrov said at the start of his meeting with Ms. Choe, according to Russia’s state-run Interfax news agency.

Ms. Choe said her meeting with Mr. Lavrov “will become an important stage in terms of the implementation of the agreements” reached by Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin, Tass said.

During a dinner banquet held for him on October 18, Mr. Lavrov said Russia deeply values North Korea’s “unwavering and principled support” for its war on Ukraine as well as Pyongyang’s decision to recognize the independence of Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

North Korean state media said Mr. Lavrov also praised North Korea for “remaining unfazed by any pressure of the U.S. and the West,” and said that Russia fully supports Mr. Kim’s push to protect its security and economic interests. Ms. Choe said Pyongyang and Moscow were building an “unbreakable comradely relationship” under the leadership of Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin.

The White House said Friday that North Korea had delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia. The White House released images that it said showed the containers were loaded onto a Russian-flagged ship before being moved via train to southwestern Russia.

Also Read: U.S. imposes sanctions on North Korean, Russian accused of supporting North Korea’s ballistics missile program

Since last year, the U.S. has accused North Korea of providing ammunition, artillery shells and rockets to Russia, likely much of them copies of Soviet-era munitions. North Korea has steadfastly denied it shipped arms to Russia, but South Korean officials said North Korean weapons provided to Russia have already been used in Ukraine.

Lim Soosuk, spokesperson of South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters on October 19 that Seoul was closely monitoring Mr. Lavrov’s visit to North Korea and that any cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang should be conducted in a way that complies with U.N. Security Council resolutions.

When asked whether Mr. Lavrov’s comments stating that Russia fully supports Mr. Kim’s policies could be interpreted as an acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear weapons status, Mr. Lim insisted that the North “no matter what it does, will never be recognized as a nuclear power and will face increasing international sanctions.”