North Korea’s Kim Jong Un arrives in Russia before meeting with Putin

Joined by his top military officials handling his nuclear-capable weapons and munitions factories, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Russia on Tuesday, where he is anticipated to carry a rare meeting with President Vladimir Putin that has sparked Western concerns a couple of potential arms deal for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

North Korea’s official news agency said Kim boarded his personal train from the capital, Pyongyang, on Sunday afternoon, and that he was accompanied by unspecified members of the country’s ruling party, government and military.

Jeon Ha Gyu, spokesperson of South Korea’s Defense Ministry, said in a briefing that the South’s military assesses that Kim’s train crossed into Russia sometime early Tuesday. He didn’t elaborate how the military obtained the data.

North Korean state media showed photographs of Kim walking past honor guards and crowds of civilians holding the national flag and flowers, and in addition of him waving from his green-and-yellow armored train before it left the station. Kim’s delegation likely includes his foreign minister, Choe Sun Hui, and his top military officials, including Korean People’s Army Marshals Ri Pyong Chol and Pak Jong Chon.

A gaggle of senior officials were on the station to offer the leader a “hearty send-off,” in accordance with the Korean Central News Agency, which didn’t specify whether the train had crossed the border. Citing unidentified Russian regional officials, Japanese broadcaster TBS reported that Kim’s train crossed the border and arrived within the border town of Khasan.

A transient statement on the Kremlin’s website on Monday said the visit is at Putin’s invitation and would happen “in the approaching days.” KCNA said the leaders would meet — without specifying when and where.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Putin and Kim will lead their delegations in talks and will also meet “one-on-one if mandatory.” He added that Putin will host an official dinner for Kim.

The talks will deal with bilateral ties, Peskov said. “As with every of our neighbors, we feel obliged to develop good, mutually helpful relations,” he added.

A possible venue is the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, where Putin arrived Monday to attend a world forum that runs through Wednesday, in accordance with Russia’s TASS news agency. Town, situated about 425 miles, or 680 kilometers, north of Pyongyang, was also the location of Putin’s first meeting with Kim in 2019.

The visit could be Kim’s first foreign trip because the Covid-19 pandemic, which had forced North Korea to implement tight border controls for greater than three years to shield its poor health care system. While Kim has shown to be more comfortable using planes than his famously flight-adverse father, he has also used his personal train for previous meetings with Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and former U.S. President Donald Trump, reviving an emblem of his family’s dynastic rule.

Associated Press journalists near the North Korea-Russia frontier saw a green train with yellow trim — much like one utilized by the reclusive Kim during previous foreign trips — at a station on the North Korean side of a border river.

The train was seen moving forwards and backwards between the station and the approach to the bridge that connects the countries, nevertheless it had not crossed the bridge as of seven p.m. local time, or 1000 GMT.

Citing unidentified South Korean government sources, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that a Kim-Putin meeting is feasible as early as Tuesday.

The Yonhap news agency and another media published similar reports. South Korea’s Presidential Office, Defense Ministry and National Intelligence Service didn’t immediately confirm those details.

U.S. officials released intelligence last week that North Korea and Russia were arranging a gathering between their leaders as they expand their cooperation within the face of deepening confrontations with the US.

In accordance with U.S. officials, Putin could deal with securing more supplies of North Korean artillery and other ammunition to refill declining reserves as he seeks to defuse a Ukrainian counteroffensive and show that he’s able to grinding out an extended war of attrition. That would potentially put more pressure on the U.S. and its partners to pursue negotiations as concerns over a protracted conflict grow despite their huge shipments of advanced weaponry to Ukraine previously 17 months.

“Arms discussions between Russia and the DPRK are expected to proceed during Kim Jong Un’s trip to Russia,” said White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “We urge the DPRK to abide by the general public commitments that Pyongyang has made to not provide or sell arms to Russia.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington will monitor the meeting closely, reminding each countries that “any transfer of arms from North Korea to Russia could be a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions,” and that the U.S. “won’t hesitate to impose latest sanctions.”

North Korea has possibly tens of hundreds of thousands of artillery shells and rockets based on Soviet designs that would potentially give an enormous boost to the Russian army, analysts say.

In exchange, Kim could seek badly needed energy and food aid and advanced weapons technologies, including those related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarines and military reconnaissance satellites, analysts say.

There are concerns that potential Russian technology transfers would increase the threat posed by Kim’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles which are designed to focus on the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. Based on North Korean state media photos, Kim’s delegation possibly includes Pak Thae Song, chairman of North Korea’s space science and technology committee, and Navy Admiral Kim Myong Sik, who’re linked with North Korean efforts to accumulate spy satellites and nuclear-capable submarines.

Kim Jong Un also appears to be bringing Jo Chun Ryong, a ruling party official accountable for munitions policies who had accompanied the leader on his recent tours to factories producing artilleries and missiles.

After a long time of an advanced, hot-and-cold relationship, Russia and North Korea have been drawing closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The bond has been driven by Putin’s need for war help and Kim’s efforts to spice up the visibility of his partnerships with traditional allies Moscow and Beijing as he tries to interrupt out of diplomatic isolation and have North Korea be a part of a united front against Washington.

While using the distraction brought on by the Ukraine conflict to ramp up its weapons development, North Korea has repeatedly blamed Washington for the crisis in Ukraine, claiming the West’s “hegemonic policy” justified a Russian offensive in Ukraine to guard itself.

North Korea is the one nation besides Russia and Syria to acknowledge the independence of two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk — and it has also hinted at an interest in sending construction employees to those areas to assist with rebuilding efforts.

Russia —together with China — have blocked U.S.-led efforts on the U.N. Security Council to strengthen sanctions on North Korea over its intensifying missile tests while accusing Washington of worsening tensions with Pyongyang by expanding military exercises with South Korea and Japan.

The US has been accusing North Korea since last yr of providing Russia with arms, including artillery shells sold to the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Each Russian and North Korean officials denied such claims. But speculation in regards to the countries’ military cooperation grew after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made a rare visit to North Korea in July, when Kim invited him to an arms exhibition and an enormous military parade within the capital where he showcased ICBMs designed to focus on the U.S. mainland.

Following that visit, Kim toured North Korea’s weapons factories, including a facility producing artillery systems where he urged employees to hurry up the event and large-scale production of recent sorts of ammunition. Experts say Kim’s visits to the factories likely had a dual goal of encouraging the modernization of North Korean weaponry and examining artillery and other supplies that would possibly be exported to Russia.

Some analysts say a possible meeting between Kim and Putin could be more about symbolic gains than substantial military cooperation.

Russia, which has at all times closely guarded its most vital weapons technologies, even from key allies akin to China, might be unwilling to make major technology transfers with North Korea for what’s more likely to be limited war supplies transported over a small rail link between the countries, they are saying.