North Korea: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has pledged complete support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. During their meeting in Pyongyang, President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia is battling the long-standing “hegemonic and imperialist policy” of the United States and its allies.
Putin expressed gratitude to Kim on Wednesday for his assistance in Ukraine and announced the signing of an agreement to further their collaboration.
The Russian president is in North Korea for the first time in 24 years, and as tensions between the two nations have grown in the months since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there is growing worry that Pyongyang is giving Russia armaments in exchange for Russian technological know-how.
North Korea and Russia have pledged to deepen their military ties while rejecting the transfer of weapons.
Even though it was early in the morning on Wednesday, Kim was waiting to receive Putin as he arrived in the North Korean capital.
A woman wearing a traditional Korean hanbok gave Putin a bunch of red roses as the two men shook hands and hugged.
After that, Kim got into Putin’s sedan and the two of them drove to the Kumsusan State Guest House together, passing through streets festooned with the Russian flag and the president’s photographs.
Later footage of Putin and Kim showed them attending an official greeting ceremony in Kim Il Sung Square, where hundreds of kids were lined up and troops were standing in rows, all of them decorated with balloons and banners.
The two leaders’ encounter was earlier hailed as a historic occasion that demonstrated the “invincibility and durability” of the friendship and unity between North Korea and Russia by the country’s official news agency, KCNA.
It continued, saying that ties between the two nations had “emerged as a strong strategic fortress for preserving international justice, peace, and security and an engine for accelerating the building of a new multi-polar world.”