North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday met for their first summit in four years, which the US said could focus on weapons deals that help the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine.
Putin and Kim held talks at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur region. They shared a handshake when Kim stepped out of his limousine and then toured the space center, visiting exhibitions on Angara rockets, a family of launch vehicles.
The visit to the facility underscored some of the items that might be on Kim’s wish list in exchange for supplying munitions to Russia. Pyongyang has failed twice this year to deploy a spy satellite and might be seeking assistance from Moscow in putting one into orbit. Kim could also be seeking technology that would help his regime’s nuclear warheads survive the heat from re-entry to the atmosphere.
Photo: Kremlin via Reuters
Putin said North Korea was interested in Russian space rockets, and his country would potentially be willing to help it build satellites, Russian state-owned news outlet RIA Novosti said.
Kim would visit civilian and military equipment factories in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and also head to Vladivostok, Putin said.
When asked before the summit whether he and Kim would discuss military-technical cooperation, Putin said: “We will talk about all issues, without hurry. There is time,” RIA reported.
Russian news agency Interfax said Russia and North Korea agreed to cooperate in sectors including military.
North Korea has backed Moscow during its invasion of Ukraine and Kim used the meeting to offer his personal support to Putin.
“I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that we have always expressed our full and unconditional support for everything that the Russian government is doing to defend its sovereign rights and its security interests in the face of such regional hegemonic forces,” Kim said in comments broadcast on TV from the meeting.
Shortly before the summit, North Korea put on a display of force, firing two short-range ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast, South Korea’s military said.
Kim might be looking for food aid and technology to support his plans to deploy a nuclear-powered submarine as well as help with his space program. Spy satellites could help Kim keep track of US forces in the region and better refine his targeting of potential strike sites, experts have said.
North Korea has some of the world’s largest supplies of munitions that are interoperable with Soviet-era systems, which Russia needs as it burns through its stocks of artillery shells. The US has said any supplies would not alter the course of the war and has told Pyongyang it would pay a price for any arms transfers.
North Korea has been busy churning out short-range ballistic missiles similar to some of the rockets Russia has used on Ukraine and which now appear to be in short supply. A transfer would mark a major elevation in cooperation, and the rockets would probably be sold at a high mark-up by Kim.
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