Putin accepts Kim’s invitation to visit North Korea, report claims

Published

2 years ago

September 14, 2023

admin

Vladimir Putin has accepted Kim Jong Un’s invitation to visit North Korea, according to the country’s state news agency.

While there was no immediate confirmation from Moscow, KCNA reports the Russian president will visit “at a convenient time”.

Kim is currently in Russia, where he has vowed to support the Kremlin’s “sacred war” against Ukraine, raising concerns the two nations could bolster their military capabilities.

“At the end of the reception, Kim Jong Un courteously invited Putin to visit the DPRK at a convenient time,” KCNA reports, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s formal name.

“Putin accepted the invitation with pleasure and reaffirmed his will to invariably carry forward the history and tradition of the Russia-DPRK friendship.”

The two leaders toasted their friendship on Wednesday with Russian wine after Mr Putin showed Kim around the country’s most modern space launch facility.

They also held talks alongside their defence ministers and called each other “comrades”.

The burgeoning friendship has concerned the West, with Washington accusing North Korea of providing weapons to Russia.

It is not clear if any deliveries have been made and the two states have denied those claims in any case – but they did promise to deepen defence cooperation.

Kim is due on Thursday to visit military and civilian aviation factories in the Russian city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur and to inspect Russia’s Pacific fleet in Vladivostok, Mr Putin said.

Military and tech matters at heart of visit

Day two of Kim’s visit to Russia and it is clear the red carpet has been well and truly rolled out.

It is rare indeed for Russia to open the door to its military sites.

But not only was North Korea’s leader shown a leading space base, Mr Putin said that today he would also visit an aviation factory and be given sight of a military programme and a demonstration of Russia’s pacific fleet in the port city of Vladivostok.

We’ve not been told if any deals were struck this week and it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever learn the specifics, but the symbolism and messaging has been stark: technological and military matters were absolutely the order of business.

It’s not just the West that will be watching nervously, Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan would be on the front line of any escalation launched by an empowered and confident North Korea.

Even China, an ally, doesn’t really want to see its already unreliable partner nuclear capable.

Russia would once have been wary too, and Mr Putin did hint yesterday that there would have to be limits to military cooperation.

But this visit has made abundantly clear almost any concern will now be set aside in pursuit of his central goal: victory in Ukraine.

What kind of weapons could North Korea provide?

Aidan Foster-Carter, a researcher in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University, told Sky News North Korea can probably supply “good quality ammunitions” to Russia.

He said Mr Putin and Kim each had something the other wanted – but it was still unclear exactly what that was going to be.

Russia needs artillery shells, he said, and he is “betting” Kim needed money, food and cheap oil.

Asked how Kim could help Mr Putin, he said North Korea was a “highly-militarised state” and focused on producing armour.

“They probably can supply good quality ammunitions,” he said.

Growing criticism

If an arms deal was to be reached, the US warned it “won’t hesitate” to slap additional sanctions on the two countries.

South Korea, meanwhile, expressed “deep concerns” over potential military cooperation.

Unification minister Kim Young-ho, who oversees relations with the North, expressed “deep concerns”, adding Moscow and Pyongyang were apparently chasing “some kind of” a military deal.

But Russian diplomats dismissed criticism and accused the US of hypocrisy as its own policies had sent weapons to allies around the world.

“The United States has no right to lecture us on how to live,” Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said in a statement.

Toast to victory for ‘great Russia’

Despite growing international criticism, Kim on Wednesday toasted to the victory of “great Russia” over a lunch of Russian pelmeni dumplings, white Amur fish soup and sturgeon.

North Korea was founded in September 1948 with the backing of the Soviet Union, and Moscow supported it for decades during the Cold War.

Support did drop after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but Mr Putin visited Pyongyang in 2000 – a year after taking over from Boris Yeltsin – for a meeting with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.

China has been seen as the greatest influence over Kim in recent years, but North Korea often tries to balance ties between Moscow and Beijing.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

6 hours ago

August 11, 2025

admin

Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

12 hours ago

August 10, 2025