Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui in the Kremlin for talks on Monday.
“Today is a national holiday for us, and meeting with good friends on holidays is a good tradition,” Putin said in greeting. The Kremlin did not disclose any details of their discussion.
North Korea supports Moscow in the Russian war on Ukraine, launched in 2022. Choe was last a guest in the Kremlin in January.
It was recently revealed that thousands of North Korean soldiers are now in Russia in the border area with Ukraine. On Friday, Choe told her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that North Korea would help Russia in the war until victory.
On Monday she delivered greetings from ruler Kim Jong Un to Putin. North Korea is internationally isolated because of its nuclear weapons tests. North Korea has also been widely criticized for supplying weapons to Russia. Russia, in turn, is subject to sanctions due to its war on Ukraine.
Putin and Kim signed a treaty on a strategic partnership between the two countries during a visit to North Korea this summer, which also provides for mutual military assistance. The Russian president recently said that the details of the deal still had to be clarified.
Western countries have described the deployment of North Korean soldiers to Russia as a massive escalation of the conflict. The troops are said to be in the western Russian region of Kursk. Kiev fears that they will soon be deployed in Ukraine.
