17 june 2024 Punjab Khabarnama : Visit comes amid global concerns around an arms agreement that provides ammunition to Moscow in return for economic assistance to aid Kim’s nuclear programme.Russian President Vladimir Putin will arrive in North Korea on Tuesday for a two-day visit, his first in 24 years, both countries announced.
Putin is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for talks focused on expanding military cooperation as they deepen their alignment in the face of separate, intensifying confrontations with Washington.
Putin is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for talks focused on expanding military cooperation as they deepen their alignment in the face of separate, intensifying confrontations with Washington.
The visit comes amid growing international concerns about an arms arrangement in which Pyongyang provides Moscow with badly needed munitions to fuel Putin’s war in Ukraine in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that would enhance the threat posed by Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile program.
Military, economic and other cooperation between North Korea and Russia have sharply increased since Kim visited the Russian Far East in September for a meeting with Putin, their first since 2019.
U.S. and South Korean officials have accused the North of providing Russia with artillery, missiles and other military equipment to help prolong its fighting in Ukraine, possibly in return for key military technologies and aid. Both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied accusations about North Korean weapons transfers, which would be in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Any weapons trade with North Korea would be a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that Russia, a permanent U.N. Security Council member, previously endorsed.
Andrei Lankov, an expert on North Korea at Kookmin University in Seoul, noted that in exchange for providing artillery munitions and short-range ballistic missiles, Pyongyang hopes to get higher-end weapons from Moscow.
Lankov noted that while Russia could be reluctant to share its state-of-the-art military technologies with North Korea, it’s eager to receive munitions from Pyongyang. “There is never enough ammunition in a war, there is a great demand for them,” Lankov told The Associated Press.
