Foreign Minister: North Korea will support Russia until it triumphs in Ukraine

2024-11-01 13:04:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

North Korea will support Russia until it achieves victory in the war in Ukraine, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said on Friday after a meeting with her Russian counterpart in Moscow, Sergei Lavrov.

"Our traditional and historical relations, which have described and tested the paths of history, are today...growing to a new level of relations of invincible military friendship," she told Lavrov.

She praised North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin for their role in deepening ties. She said Pyongyang has no doubt that the Russian military and people, under Putin's "wise leadership," will "achieve great victory in their holy war to protect the country's sovereign rights and security interests." theirs".

"And we also guarantee that until the day of victory, we will stand firmly alongside our Russian partners," she said.

Lavrov spoke of "very close relations" between the militaries of the two countries and said that this enables them to solve important security issues together.

None of them talked about statements by the United States, NATO, South Korea and Ukraine this week that North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that 8,000 North Korean troops are in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops launched an incursion in August and have since held hundreds of square kilometers of territory. He said he expects these troops to be sent to the front line in the coming days.

"We are deeply grateful to our Korean friends for their principled stance regarding the events taking place in Ukraine as a result of the West's intentions to expand NATO to the east and openly encourage the racist regime to exterminate everything that it is Russian", said Lavrov.

Choe said the North and Russia should continue deepening relations in accordance with the treaty signed months ago by the leaders of both countries, which contains a clause on mutual defense.

Moscow, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has neither flatly denied nor admitted that North Korea has sent troops. But Putin said that it is up to Russia how to implement the treaty with Kim./ Rel