FALCON POWERS – Vladimir Putin is set to travel to North Korea for a two-day visit starting Tuesday, the Kremlin said, in the Russian president’s first trip to the country in more than two decades – and the latest sign of a deepening alignment that’s raised widespread international concern.
This is a rare overseas trip for Putin since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022 and a key moment for North Korean President Kim Jong Un, who has not hosted another world leader in Pyongyang – among the globe’s most politically isolated capitals – since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The closely watched visit is expected to further cement a burgeoning partnership between the two powers that is founded on their shared animosity toward the West and driven by Putin’s need for support in his ongoing war on Ukraine.
Following his visit to North Korea, Putin will travel to Hanoi Wednesday for another two-day trip, in a display of Communist-governed Vietnam’s ties to Russia that is likely to rankle the United States.
Putin’s trip to North Korea will have a “very eventful” agenda, his aide Yuri Ushakov said during a press conference Monday. Both leaders plan to sign a new strategic partnership, Ushakov said, with main events of the visit scheduled for Wednesday.
Ushakov insisted the agreement is not provocative or aimed against other countries, but is meant to ensure greater stability in northeast Asia. He said the new agreement will replace documents signed between Moscow and Pyongyang in 1961, 2000 and 2001.
“The parties are still working on it, and a final decision regarding its signing will be formed in the coming hours,” Ushakov said, according to Russian state media RIA.
Satellite imagery from Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies shows preparations for a large parade in Pyongyang’s central square. One image shows a grandstand being constructed on the eastern side of Kim Il Sung Square, the site where all major parades in North Korea are held. In an earlier image, taken on June 5, North Koreans can be seen practicing marching formations.
US national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday the Biden administration wasn’t “concerned about the trip” itself, but added, “What we are concerned about is the deepening relationship between these two countries.”
The US, South Korea and other countries have accused North Korea of providing substantial military aid to Russia’s war effort in recent months, while observers have raised concerns that Moscow may be violating international sanctions to aid Pyongyang’s development of its nascent military satellite program. Both countries have denied North Korean arms exports.
Putin’s trip reciprocates one Kim made last September, when the North Korean leader traveled in his armored train to Russia’s far eastern region, for a visit that included stops at a factory that produces fighter jets and a rocket-launch facility.
It also comes as tensions remain high on the Korean peninsula amid heightened international concern about the North Korean leader’s intentions as he ramped up bellicose language and scrapped a longstanding policy of seeking peaceful reunification with South Korea.
South Korea fired warning shots on Tuesday after North Korean soldiers working in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas briefly crossed into the South, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second incident of its kind in the last two weeks.
