Call between the two leaders comes days ahead of US President Donald Trump\u2019s summit with Putin in Alaska.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the \u201cbravery\u201d and \u201cheroism\u201d of North Korean soldiers in retaking Russia\u2019s Kursk region from Ukrainian forces during a call with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korean state media has reported.<\/p>\n
Putin told Kim that he \u201chighly appreciated\u201d North Korea\u2019s support and the \u201cself-sacrificing spirit\u201d displayed by its troops during the liberation of the western region, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Kim expressed his \u201cheartfelt thanks\u201d to Putin and said Pyongyang would \u201calways remain faithful\u201d to the spirit of the mutual defence treaty signed by the sides last year, as well as \u201cfully support all measures to be taken by the Russian leadership in the future\u201d, the KCNA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heads of states of the two countries exchanged views on the issues of mutual concern,\u201d the KCNA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cKim Jong Un and Putin agreed to make closer contact in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The call, days before Putin is set to meet United States President Donald Trump in Alaska to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine, is the latest sign of strengthening ties between North Korea and Russia amid Moscow\u2019s ostracisation on the world stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of ifs still in the air, but the call suggests there\u2019s a role for Russia, similar to the role South Korea played in 2018, in helping create an opening for US-DPRK relations,\u201d Jenny Town, the director of the Korea programme at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for North Korea\u2019s official name, the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might not be a focal point of the upcoming meeting, but it is likely to be part of the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, Kim told Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that Pyongyang would \u201cunconditionally support\u201d all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine, according to North Korean state media reports.<\/p>\n
North Korea has deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russia\u2019s war and has drawn up plans to dispatch thousands more, according to\u00a0assessments by South Korea\u2019s National Intelligence Service.<\/p>\n
In April, Putin announced that Moscow had fully recaptured Kursk, though Ukrainian officials disputed his claim that the entire region had been brought under Russian control.<\/p>\n
At his scheduled summit with Putin on Friday, Trump is expected to press the Russian leader to agree to a peace deal.<\/p>\n
On Monday, he told reporters that he will probably know within the \u201cfirst two minutes\u201d of meeting Putin whether they can reach a deal and that any agreement would involve \u201csome swapping, changes in land\u201d between Moscow and Kyiv.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Call between the two leaders comes days ahead of US President Donald Trump\u2019s summit with Putin in Alaska.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[11410,6178,32,299,29515,12,6660,332,7661,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-340475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-asia-pacific","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-kim-jong-un","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-north-korea","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","17":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115020069253335091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}