Kim Jong-un has offered Vladimir Putin his support for Russia’s “sacred fight” against the west during talks that also touched on possible Russian help with North Korea’s space programme.
The North Korean and Russian leaders met on Wednesday at a space base in the far east of Russia amid warnings that Kim was poised to offer the Kremlin artillery shells and other munitions for the war in Ukraine.
Putin, who greeted Kim with a handshake and a lengthy chat outside the Vostochny cosmodrome in the remote region of Amur, reportedly offered Russian help with the Pyongyang regime’s troubled satellite programme.
North Korea has made huge advances in its nuclear and ballistic weapons programmes despite years of UN-led sanctions supported by Russia, but it has fared less well in its attempts to launch a satellite.
It failed to put a military spy satellite into orbit in recent months, experts said.
While Kim made the long train journey north hoping to secure Russian expertise in weapons technology, and potentially food and other aid, their first meeting for four years was a rare opportunity for Putin to welcome one of the Kremlin’s few international allies.
Kim told Putin North Korea would make bilateral ties with Russia its number one priority, and that he saw the war in Ukraine as an attempt to challenge “hegemonist forces” seeking to undermine Russia’s security.
“Now Russia has risen to the sacred fight to protect its sovereignty and security against the hegemonic forces that oppose Russia. And now we want to further develop the relationship,” Kim said, according to footage broadcast on Russian TV.
“We have always expressed full and unconditional support for all the measures taken by the Russian government, and I take this opportunity again to affirm that we will always be with Russia.”
The two leaders’ one-on-one talks, as well as discussions with delegations, lasted for about two hours and were followed by an official dinner in Kim’s honour. The two also discussed the possibility of sending a North Korean cosmonaut into space, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The choice of venue for the summit was significant, given North Korea’s interest in pursuing a space programme. Before their talks, the leaders toured assembly and launch facilities at the cosmodrome, located in the forests of eastern Russia, not far from the Chinese border.
But the US is most alarmed by Putin’s reported interest in North Korean weaponry, and said last week that Pyongyang would “pay a price” if it supplied Russia. South Korea and the US have said that any arms deal would violate UN security council resolutions supported by Russia.
Russia was expected to use Wednesday’s talks to seek artillery shells and antitank missiles from Pyongyang, which wants advanced satellite and nuclear-powered submarine technology in return.
It remains unclear whether Russia would be willing to share such sensitive technologies in exchange for what could be a limited amount of North Korean ammunition slowly delivered across the countries’ small shared border.
“We’ll talk about all the issues, without rushing. There is time,” Putin said before sitting down with Kim. When reporters asked if Russia would help Pyongyang build satellites, Putin said: “That’s why we came here. The leader shows great interest in rocket engineering, they are also trying to develop space.”
Kim’s entourage included several officials whose role suggested discussions would centre on military cooperation, with the Korean People’s Army marshal, Pak Jong-chon, and the director of the munitions industry department, Jo Chun-ryong, among the visitors.
Photos taken at the venue revealed that Kim was accompanied by his powerful younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, who has travelled with him on previous overseas visits.
Putin told Kim he was very glad to see him, according to Russia state media, while Kim, who had earlier spoken of the strategic importance of his regime’s ties to the Kremlin, thanked Putin for the invitation to visit Russia, “despite being busy” – a possible reference to Russia’s long and troubled war in Ukraine.
Russia’s ammunition shortage has forced it to conserve its shells and rockets, impose daily fire limits and focus more on precision guided types of munitions over volumes of fire, said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow on the Russia and Eurasia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Russia is mobilising production, but output will be quite short of their needs,” he said. “Therefore they are likely to seek import from any source that can help make up for the deficit.”
Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said it was entirely possible that North Korea had large stocks of ammunition that Russia could use.
“Whether any deal is struck remains to be seen,” he said. “We will not know for sure until there is hard evidence that Russia has used North Korean arms and ammunition on the battlefield in Ukraine.”
Kim may also seek badly needed energy and food supplies. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Andrey Rudenko, said Russian officials may discuss humanitarian aid with the North Korean delegation, according to Russian news agencies.
On Monday, the US described Putin as desperate in seeking a meeting with Kim.
“Having to travel across the length of his own country to meet with an international pariah to ask for assistance in a war that he expected to win in the opening month, I would characterise it as him begging for assistance,” the State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said.
Peskov said that the foreign ministers of the two countries would meet next month in North Korea, though there were no plans for Putin himself to visit Pyongyang
Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, told AFP that the meeting was part of Moscow’s “gentle diplomatic blackmail” of Seoul because Russia did not want South Korea to supply weapons to Kyiv.
Seoul is a major arms exporter and has sold tanks to Kyiv’s ally Poland, but longstanding domestic policy bars it from selling weapons into active conflicts.
“The major worry of the Russian government now is a possible shipment of the South Korean ammunition to Ukraine, not just one shipment but a lot of shipments,” Lankov said.
