“Solidarity And Cooperation.” Meeting Between Vladimir Putin And Kim Jong-Un
The summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday, September 13 was divided into four stages. They toured the Siberian Vostochny Cosmodrome, after which negotiations between the delegations of the two countries took place, followed by a personal meeting between Putin and Kim and an official dinner in honor of the North Korean president. Among the specific projects is the logistics and transport “triangle” between Russia, China, and North Korea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with a long handshake at the main entrance to the Russian Vostochny Cosmodrome. After greeting Putin, Kim Jong-un thanked the Russian president for the invitation and emphasized that North Korea “supports Russia’s decisions” and “intends to further develop ties between the two countries.”
“We will discuss everything,” Putin said, answering a question from journalists whether military-technical cooperation will be on the meeting’s agenda. “We’ll talk about all the issues leisurely. There is plenty of time,” he added. Regarding the possibility of Russia providing assistance to Pyongyang in creating satellites, Putin clarified, “That’s why we came here. The leader of the DPRK shows great interest in rocket technology, they are also trying to develop space,” the Russian leader emphasized.
The Vostochny Cosmodrome is located in eastern Russia, in the Amur region, and includes, as the Russian agency RIA Novosti explained, “a launch complex designed for Soyuz-2 series rockets, for pre-launch preparation and subsequent flights, as well as necessary work in the event of an emergency landing on an area of about 45 thousand square meters.”
Therefore, the first stage of the summit was devoted to visiting the cosmodrome.
After touring the cosmodrome, the delegations from Moscow and Pyongyang held a short official meeting, during which Kim said that “Russia has risen to a sacred struggle to defend its sovereignty.”
“North Korea will always stand alongside Russia in the fight against imperialism,” said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who believes negotiations with Putin will take bilateral relations to a new level. “Relations with Russia are North Korea’s top priority,” Kim emphasized.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who visited Pyongyang in August, held a lengthy confidential meeting with Kim and paved the way for the North Korean leader’s first trip abroad since the Covid pandemic.
The brief meeting between the delegations was followed by a top-secret one-on-one meeting between Putin and Kim. As always happens at meetings of this type, nothing specific was said on the fundamental topics of the negotiations from the Russian and North Korean delegations. According to American intelligence sources, the talks should focus on the delicate subject of strengthening military-technical cooperation between Russia and North Korea, whose military arsenals still largely date back to Soviet times. “Russia is rapidly exhausting its military arsenals,” The New York Times suggested, “and would like to receive supplies from North Korea, which uses the same calibers of artillery shells and anti-tank missiles as the Russian army.” In return, Kim would like Moscow to provide North Korea with some of its advanced technology for building spy satellites and nuclear submarines. The media recalled how the Soviet Union trained North Korean scientists and technicians in the fundamental principles of creating atomic weapons in the 1950s and 1960s.
Washington immediately used the strengthening of military-technical cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang as an opportunity to announce the dispatch of long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. The American television channel CNN emphasized that “the final decision on providing Kyiv with the ATACMS system has not yet been made.” However, according to a spokesman for US President Joe Biden’s administration, after the Putin-Kim summit, “the likelihood that this will happen now is much higher than before.”
After lunch, Russian President Putin mentioned only one topic for the summit: agriculture. “We have what to offer. And we provide humanitarian assistance to the country, but in addition to humanitarian assistance, there is the opportunity to simply work on equal terms, and here the prospects are not bad,” Putin told the Russian TV channel Rossiya 1.
Russia, which expects a grain harvest of at least 130 million tons this year, has promised to send new “substantial” humanitarian aid to North Korea. Last year, Moscow already “donated” 25 thousand tons of wheat to Pyongyang.
Finally, the Russian president also mentioned other joint projects related to transport and logistics. “This includes transport links, logistics, we mean the railway and the road, we also mean the resumption of the seaport operations, where we can create a very good logistics triangle. The railway, the port, then the road to China. Here it is possible to significantly increase transportation volumes, which is very important in general,” Putin said, without going into details of the project.