Kim Jong-un leaves Pyongyang by train for Russia | EUROtoday

North Korean chief Kim Jong Un left Pyongyang by train on Sunday for Russia, signaling an imminent assembly with Vladimir Putin.

By QM with AFP

Une diplomatic assembly which will likely be scrutinized by a lot of the world. North Korean chief Kim Jong-un left Pyongyang by train on Sunday to go to Russia, the place he is because of meet President Vladimir Putin, the KCNA information company introduced on Tuesday (September 12).

Kim Jong-un “departed on his train on Sunday afternoon to travel to the Russian Federation”, main a delegation of senior officers from the federal government, the armed forces and South Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party. North, wrote the official media.

Experts say the journey to Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east, the place an annual financial discussion board is being held, might be about an arms deal. Vladimir Putin is reportedly searching for to acquire North Korean weapons and ammunition for Russian forces combating in Ukraine. North Korea, for its half, would search to acquire superior applied sciences from Russia for its satellite tv for pc and submarine program.

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A second go to to Russia since 2012 for Kim Jong-un

KCNA didn’t specify the whereabouts of Kim Jong-un’s train on Tuesday, together with whether or not or not it had already crossed the border into Russia. On Monday, the company introduced that “respected Comrade Kim Jong-un will meet and hold discussions with Comrade Putin during his visit.”

Moscow had additionally confirmed this deliberate go to, the second by the North Korean chief to Russia since he got here to energy in 2012. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, nonetheless, assured Monday, earlier than the official announcement of the journey, that No Kim-Putin assembly was deliberate as a part of the Vladivostok financial discussion board.

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Kim Jong-un had not left North Korea for the reason that outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Kim Jong Il, father and predecessor of the present North Korean primary, was afraid of taking the aircraft. His son additionally favors rail for his uncommon journeys overseas. According to Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, Kim Jong-un lacks confidence in North Korean planes and maintains “concerns about the potential for air attacks from Washington.”

“Diplomatic blackmail” in the direction of Seoul

The White House stated on September 5 that Kim Jong-un wished to see Vladimir Putin to debate arms gross sales. The Russian president, compelled to “cross his entire country to meet a pariah on the international scene in order to ask him for help in a war he hoped to win in a month”, is thus lowered to “begging” from the North Korean chief, criticized the State Department on Monday.

Russia and North Korea have historic ties and Kim Jong-un has repeatedly expressed his help to Moscow for his operations in Ukraine. For Andrei Lankov, a North Korea skilled at Seoul’s Kookmin University, a Putin-Kim summit is a part of Moscow’s “friendly diplomatic blackmail” in opposition to Seoul as a result of Russia doesn’t need the South Koreans provide weapons to Ukraine.

READ ALSOAmmunition, meals, care… The hellish logistics of the struggle in Ukraine

South Korea is the truth is a significant exporter of navy tools and has offered tanks to Poland, an ally of kyiv. But its long-standing home coverage prohibits it from supplying weapons to events engaged in actual wars. “The main concern of the Russian government at the moment is a possible delivery of South Korean munitions to Ukraine, not just one delivery but many deliveries,” Andrei Lankov instructed Agence France Presse.

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Cheong Seong-chang, a researcher on the Sejong Institute, instructed Agence France Presse that if North Korea intensified its navy cooperation with Russia, “there would be an increased likelihood of prolonged conflict in Ukraine.” . While as a reward for its help to Moscow, “the development of North Korea’s nuclear submarines and reconnaissance satellites could progress at a faster pace.”