WASHINGTON: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expects to meet with President Vladimir Putin in Russia to discuss providing arms to Moscow for its war in Ukraine, the United States said Monday.
The announcement comes after the White House last week warned that Russia was already in secret, active talks with the North to acquire a range of munitions and supplies for Moscow’s war effort.
“As we have warned publicly, arms negotiations between Russia and the DPRK are actively advancing,” National Security Council (NSC) spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, using an acronym for the North.
“We have information that Kim Jong Un expects these discussions to continue, to include leader-level diplomatic engagement in Russia.”
Kim — who rarely travels outside his country — is likely to head later this month to Vladivostok, on Russia’s Pacific coast not far from North Korea, to meet with Putin, according to The New York Times.
The paper said Kim could even travel to Moscow, but that was uncertain.
NSC spokesman John Kirby said last week that despite its denials, North Korea supplied infantry rockets and missiles to Russia in 2022 for use by the privately controlled Wagner military group.
Meanwhile Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu traveled last month to North Korea seeking to acquire additional munitions for the war, Watson added.
“We urge the DPRK to cease its arms negotiations with Russia and abide by the public commitments that Pyongyang has made to not provide or sell arms to Russia,” Watson said.
Last week at the United Nations, the United States, Britain, South Korea and Japan said in a joint statement that any deal to increase bilateral cooperation between Russia and North Korea would violate Security Council resolutions forbidding arms deals with Pyongyang — resolutions that Moscow itself had endorsed.
They said that following Shoigu’s visit to Pyongyang, another group of Russian officials traveled to North Korea for follow-up talks on arms purchases.
Any talks between Kim and Putin would come as Ukrainian carries out a highly-scrutinized counteroffensive in the south and east of the country, which Putin on Monday claimed was being unsuccessful.
“It is not that it is stalling. It is a failure,” Putin said Monday. “At least today this is what it looks like. Let’s see what happens next.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov on Monday announced he had handed in his resignation to parliament after President Volodymyr Zelensky called for “new approaches” to face Russia’s offensive.
US says North Korea’s Kim expects arms meeting with Putin
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US says North Korea’s Kim expects arms meeting with Putin
- Kim — who rarely travels outside his country — is likely to head later this month to Vladivostok
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
