Kim Jong Un allegedly heading to Russia for possible Putin meet.
Kim Jong Un Reportedly on His Way to Russia for Potential Meeting with Vladimir Putin
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is reportedly on his way to Russia on Monday for a potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, multiple South Korean media outlets reported.
Neither Russia nor North Korea’s governments have officially confirmed the two leaders would meet, but Putin reportedly arrived in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to state TV Russia 24, which is where the Eastern Economic Forum is taking place this week.
South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Kim left Pyongyang late on Sunday and would meet Putin as early as Tuesday.
Advancing Discussions and Potential Deal
In late August, U.S. officials warned that Russia’s attempts to secure a deal for weapons from North Korea for its war in Ukraine have “advanced,” with a possibility of a meeting between Kim and Putin. The U.S. initially uncovered that North Korea had provided Russia with infantry rockets and missiles late last year, while the U.S. is trying to publicly pressure North Korea out of a subsequent deal.
“Our current analysis is that discussions between North Korea and Russia, with respect to North Korea providing military support to Russia for its war in Ukraine — that those discussions are actively advancing,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters last week. “We also have information, as we have indicated publicly, that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, has some expectation that those discussions will continue as we go forward — including leader-level discussions, perhaps even in-person leader-level discussions.”
Sullivan did not specify, when asked by reporters, what North Korea could get out of a potential agreement.
A week earlier, National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters that a deal would likely net Russia “significant quantities and multiple types of munitions from the DPRK which the Russian military plans to use in Ukraine,” adding that it “could also include the provision of raw materials that would assist Russia’s defense industrial base.”
A Rare Trip for Kim Jong Un
Kim, since assuming power in 2011, has infrequently left the country, and hasn’t since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This reported trip would be his tenth, and the previous nine came in 2018 and 2019 as he negotiated with the U.S. and then-president Donald Trump over his country’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
Kim traveled to Vladivostok for a meeting with Putin in April 2019.
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