BarcelonaAutocratic Russian President Vladimir Putin will arrive in North Korea this Tuesday night local time to meet dictator Kim Jong-un for a two-day visit. Before taking flight to Pyongyang, Putin published a letter in the North Korean press in which he promised to build commercial and security systems with the Republic that are not under Western control.
Putin is thus looking for reliable partners to boost the Russian army in its war against Ukraine. The two leaders last met in September in the Russian city of Vladivostok, but this is Putin’s first visit to Pyongyang since 2000, when he became the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit North Korea.
In the letter, published by the newspaper Rodong Sinmun, the official spokesman of the Workers’ Party, the Russian president assures that both countries have developed good relations and partnerships over the last 70 years based on equality, mutual respect and trust. “We will develop alternative trade mechanisms and mutual agreements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions,” it reads. “And, at the same time, we will build an equal and indivisible security architecture in Eurasia.”
He also thanks North Korea for supporting his special military operation in Ukraine, according to the Kremlin’s language. It is committed, however, to helping Pyongyang defend its interests despite what it calls “pressure, blackmail and military threats from the US.”
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday repeated accusations that North Korea had supplied “dozens of ballistic missiles and more than 11,000 containers of ammunition to Russia” for use in Ukraine. According to Washington’s version, Putin “has been very desperate in recent months” due to the lack of weapons and is looking to Iran and North Korea to get more. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied this arms trade, prohibited by United Nations sanctions on North Korea.
Still, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Wonsik has commented in an interview on Bloomberg News that Seoul has identified at least 10,000 containers suspected of containing artillery ammunition and other weapons shipped from the north in Russia. The containers could hold up to 4.8 million projectiles, Shin said. EU countries have sent only half that amount to Kiiv in the last year.
Russia has pledged to cooperate with North Korea in a range of humanitarian, economic, trade and military areas and has blocked efforts by the United Nations Security Council to rein in and impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.
During the two-day visit, Putin will stay at Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Guest House, which also hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a state visit to North Korea in 2019. The mansion is located near the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun , where the father and grandfather of the current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, are buried. The guesthouse was built in just a few months, just in time for Xi’s visit. Putin will spend one night there before traveling to Vietnam.
Diplomatic visits to North Korea are usually carefully choreographed and broadcast on Korean central television, with a mellifluous and moving soundtrack, filled with texts that border on poetic prose, according to his story. Western correspondents from Seoul, the capital of South Korea. From this account, it is easy to deduce that Putin’s visit will be no different. The cameras will look for the best angles of Kim Jong-un and President Putin.
