2023-09-12 03:40:41
Moscow and Pyongyang will have the opportunity to further cement their common front against Washington. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un left Pyongyang by train on Sunday for Russia, where he is scheduled to meet President Vladimir Putin, the KCNA news agency announced Tuesday.
Kim Jong-un “departed on his train on Sunday afternoon to travel to the Russian Federation”, leading a delegation of senior officials from the government, the armed forces and South Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party. North, wrote the official media.
Weapons for technology?
Experts say the trip to Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east, where an annual economic forum is being held, could be about an arms deal. Vladimir Putin is reportedly seeking to obtain North Korean weapons and ammunition for Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. North Korea, for its part, would seek to obtain advanced technologies from Russia for its satellite and submarine program.
KCNA, however, did not specify where Kim Jong-un’s train was on Tuesday, and in particular whether or not it had already crossed the border with Russia. On Monday, the agency announced that “respected Comrade Kim Jong-un will meet and hold discussions with Comrade Putin during his visit.”
Kremlin denies future meeting
Moscow had also confirmed this planned visit, the second by the North Korean leader to Russia since he came to power in 2012. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, however, assured Monday, before the official announcement of the trip, that No Kim-Putin meeting was planned as part of the Vladivostok economic forum.
Kim Jong-un had not left North Korea since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Kim Jong-il, father and predecessor of the current North Korean number one, was afraid of taking the ‘plane. His son also favors rail for his rare trips abroad. According to Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, Kim Jong-un lacks confidence in North Korean planes and maintains “concerns about the potential for air attacks from Washington.”
The White House, for its part, affirmed on September 5 that Kim Jong-un wanted to see Vladimir Putin to discuss arms sales. The Russian president, forced to “cross his entire country to meet a pariah on the international scene in order to ask him for help in a war he hoped to win in a month”, is thus reduced to “begging” from the North Korean leader, criticized the State Department on Monday.
Russia and North Korea have historical ties and Kim Jong-un has repeatedly expressed his support to Moscow for his operations in Ukraine.
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