SEOUL.-Russian President Vladimir Putin will arrive in North Korea on Tuesday for a two-day visit, North Korean state media said on Monday.
Putin is expected to meet with North Korean leader Vladimir Putin to discuss expanding military cooperation. The two countries are strengthening their ties in the face of different and growing confrontations with Washington.
The North’s Korean Central News Agency said Monday that Putin would make an official visit to the country on Tuesday and Wednesday following an invitation from Kim. State media did not initially provide further details. Russia confirmed the visit in a simultaneous announcement.
It will be Putin’s first visit to North Korea in 24 years. There is growing international concern over an arms deal in which Pyongyang provides Moscow with urgently needed munitions for Putin’s war in Ukraine in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that would increase the threat posed by nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons program. Kim missiles.
Military, economic and other cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow have grown so dramatically that Kim visited Russia’s far east in September to meet with Putin, their first meeting since 2019.
U.S. and South Korean officials have accused the North of providing Russia with artillery, missiles and other military equipment to help it continue its fight in Ukraine, possibly in exchange for key military assistance and technology. Both North Korea and Russia have denied accusations of North Korean weapons deliveries, something that would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Any arms trade with North Korea would violate several UN Security Council resolutions that Russia, a permanent member of the institution, has passed in the past.
Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, said that in exchange for providing artillery munitions and short-range ballistic missiles, Pyongyang is hoping to get higher-end weapons from Moscow.
Lankov noted that while Russia might be reluctant to share its modern military technology with North Korea, it is very interested in receiving ammunition from Pyongyang. “There is never enough ammunition in a war, there is a great demand,” Lankov explained to The Associated Press.
Putin visited Pyongyang for the first time in July 2000, months after he was first elected, and met with the North Korean leader at the time, Kim Jong Il, the current president’s father.
Moscow has said it “very much appreciates” North Korean support for Russian military actions in Ukraine, and cited its “close and fruitful cooperation” in the United Nations and other international organizations.
Russia, like China, has repeatedly blocked attempts by the United States and its partners to impose new UN sanctions on North Korea over its successive banned ballistic missile tests.
In March, a Russian veto ended oversight of U.N. sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program, prompting Western accusations that Moscow was trying to avoid scrutiny because it allegedly violates sanctions to buy and use weapons from Pyongyang. in Ukraine.
Putin this year sent Kim a high-end Aurus Senat limousine, which he had shown the North Korean leader when they met at a summit in September. Observers said the shipment violated a U.N. resolution aimed at pressuring the country to give up its nuclear weapons program by banning exports of luxury goods to North Korea.
Putin has worked to restore ties with Pyongyang as part of his efforts to restore his country’s global influence and Soviet-era alliances. Moscow’s ties with North Korea weakened after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Kim Jong Un first met Putin in 2019 in the eastern Russian port of Vladivostok.
Source: With information from AP
