Russia's top diplomat on Friday met his North Korean counterpart for talks amid reports that Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to Russia to support its military in the war in Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui's visit to Moscow and her meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came on the heels of the Pentagon's statement that North Korea has deployed about 10,000 troops to Russia to fight against Ukraine.
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The Biden administration said Thursday that some 8,000 North Korean soldiers are now in Russia's Kursk region near Ukraine’s border and are preparing to help the Kremlin fight against Ukrainian troops in the coming days.
Western leaders have described the North Korean troop deployment as a significant escalation that could also jolt relations in the Indo-Pacific region.
Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have specified the agenda for Choe's talks in Moscow, but in a closed-door hearing at South Korea’s parliament, the South’s spy agency said Choe may be involved in high-level discussions on sending additional troops to Russia and negotiating what the North would get in return.
South Korean and Western officials have voiced concern that Russia may offer technology that could advance the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program.
Meeting Choe in Moscow on Friday, Lavrov hailed ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, saying that they “have reached an unprecedented high level over the past few years,” and proposed discussing the implementation of the strategic partnership agreement the two nations signed earlier this year.
“We will have discussions on a series of issues regarding politics and foreign policy as well as matters that require a joint response between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation,” Choe said, invoking the North’s formal name.
She reiterated Pyongyang's support "for the just fight of Russia’s military and people to defend their country’s sovereign rights and security interests” in Ukraine.
Moscow and Pyongyang have responded vaguely to South Korean and Western claims of the North Korean troop deployment to Russia, emphasizing that their military cooperation conforms with international law, without directly admitting the presence of the North’s forces in Russia.
The United States and its allies also have accused North Korea of providing millions of artillery shells and other equipment to Russia to fuel its military action in Ukraine.
Russia, along with China, has blocked U.S.-led efforts at the U.N. Security Council to tighten sanctions on North Korea over its recent missile testing, which intensified after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia also vetoed a U.N. resolution to extend the mandate of monitors in March, in a move that effectively abolished oversight by U.N. experts of Security Council sanctions against North Korea.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol last month raised the possibility of supplying Ukraine with weapons while saying Seoul is preparing countermeasures that could be rolled out in stages depending on the degree of military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.
South Korea, a growing arms exporter, has provided humanitarian aid and other nonlethal support to Ukraine and joined U.S.-led economic sanctions against Moscow. It has so far resisted calls by Kyiv and NATO to directly supply Ukraine with weapons, citing a longstanding policy of not providing arms to countries engaged in active conflict.
In other developments:
— Russia launched three aviation missiles and 48 drones of various types, including Shaheds, at Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian air force said. One missile and 31 drones were intercepted, 14 drones were jammed and three drones flew to the territory of Belarus, the air force said in a report on Friday morning. Several civilian facilities, as well as apartment buildings and private houses in Poltava, Cherkasy, Kyiv and Odesa regions were damaged by drone debris.
— The Russian military on Friday said it intercepted and destroyed a total of 83 Ukrainian drones over four Russian regions near the border with Ukraine and the annexed Crimean Peninsula. In the Bryansk region, a drone hit a residential block, local authorities said. No casualties were reported. In the Stavropol region, a drone hit an oil depot, according to local officials. Unconfirmed media reports said the depot caught fire.
— Lavrov plans to attend an international meeting in December in Malta, which would be his first trip to a European Union country since the start of the war, the newspaper Vedomosti cited ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying. Lavrov plans to make the trip for a gathering of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, according to the report.
The OSCE includes countries strongly opposed to the Ukraine war, including the U.S. and many European nations, as well as Moscow's supporter Belarus and former Soviet Central Asian states that have taken neutral stances.