North Korea’s Kim is in Russia to meet Putin, as both are locked in standoffs with the West
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s Kim Jong Un rolled into Russia on an armored train Tuesday to see President Vladimir Putin, a rare meeting between isolated leaders driven together by their need for support in escalating standoffs with the West.
Kim is expected to seek economic aid and military technology for his impoverished country, and, in an unusual twist, appears to have something Putin desperately needs: munitions for Russia’s grueling war in Ukraine.
This meeting is a chance for the North Korean leader to get around crippling UN sanctions and years of diplomatic isolation. For Putin, it’s an opportunity to refill ammunition stores that the war has drained.
Any arms deal with North Korea would violate the sanctions, which Russia supported in the past.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim boarded his personal train bound for Russia on Sunday afternoon, accompanied by members of the ruling party, government and military.
His final destination is uncertain. Many had assumed Kim and Putin would meet in Vladisvostok, a Russian city close to the border where the two leaders had their last meeting in 2019, and which Putin is visiting this week for an economic forum.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed only that Kim has entered Russia, and state news agency RIA-Novosti later reported his train had headed north after crossing the Razdolnaya River, taking it away from Vladivostok. The South Korean news agency Yonhap later published a photo that it said showed the train in Ussuriysk, a city about 60 kilometers north of Vladivostok that has a sizeable ethnic Korean population.
Kim is apparently accompanied by Jo Chun Ryong, a ruling party official in charge of munitions policies who joined the leader on recent tours of factories producing artillery shells and missiles, said South Korea’s Unification Ministry. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will be part of the Russian delegation, according to Peskov.
Kim is making his first foreign trip since the pandemic, during which North Korea imposed tight border controls for more than three years. After decades of hot-and-cold relations, Russia and North Korea have drawn closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
