Russia Sends Top Officials to Lend ‘Complete Support and Solidarity’ to North Korea

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday for a two-day summit between top Russian and North Korean officials, plus an hour-long meeting between Lavrov and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

The meeting was a troubling sign of deepening cooperation between the two aggressive despotisms and might have paved the way for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to pay his own visit to North Korea soon.

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Upon arriving in North Korea, Lavrov thanked the Kim regime for its “unwavering and principled support” of the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Lavrov offered  Russia’s “complete support and solidarity” in return, and reportedly provided his North Korean hosts with a briefing on Putin’s visit to Beijing for the 10th anniversary Belt and Road Initiative summit.

“After the historic summit between President Putin and Chairman of State Affairs Kim Jong-un at the Vostochny Cosmodrome on September 13, we can confidently say that the relations have reached a qualitatively new strategic level,” Lavrov said, referring to Kim’s recent visit to Russia.

The North Korean regime said Pyongyang and Moscow are forging an “unbreakable comradely relationship” in the face of Western hostility.

Lavrov claimed many other countries secretly desire such close friendship with Russia but have been intimidated out of declaring it openly. North Korea is one of the few governments on Earth to openly support the Russian invasion of Ukraine; even Russia’s senior partner in tyranny, China, has stopped short of endorsing the invasion, although it also refuses to condemn Russia’s actions.

Lavrov claimed North Korea is partnered with China and Russia in a policy of international peacemaking, seeking reduced tensions. International analysts believe what Russia is actually doing in North Korea is securing additional munitions for Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has been monitoring a flurry of activity at North Korea’s Najin Port over the past two months. CSIS analysts believe at least six ships have transferred North Korean munitions to Russia from the port, in addition to weapons shipped by train through a major railroad line between the two countries. The seaborne munitions are evidently passed from North Korean ships to Russian vessels at sea.

The satellite images of Najin Port appear to corroborate U.S. and South Korean allegations that North Korea has already sent over a thousand containers of military equipment to Russia, despite denials from both Pyongyang and Moscow. Russia would most likely offer North Korea advanced missile technology in trade. Kim’s visit to Russia brought him to the Vostochny Cosmodrome, where he displayed great interest in Russian rockets.

The South Korean Unification Ministry said on Thursday that one result of North Korea’s increasing trade with Russia, and its resumption of trade with China after pandemic restrictions closed the border, is that Kim’s family and other top North Korean officials have resumed purchasing exorbitant amounts of luxury goods for themselves, from watches and jewelry to designer clothes.

Luxury purchases by North Korean officials are supposedly blocked by United Nations sanctions, but Russia and China help the communist aristocracy in Pyongyang to get around those restrictions, often using diplomatic parcels to get the high-end goods to North Korea. Even though North Korea’s citizens are starving and food production is collapsing, the Kim regime and its apparatchiks snatch up hundreds of millions of dollars in extravagant luxuries every year.