Lavrov in North Korea amid suspected weapons shipments

Seoul/Moscow — Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday for meetings that are seen as setting the stage for a visit by President Vladimir Putin, who has stepped up co-operation with politically isolated North Korea.

Lavrov’s two-day visit comes a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a rare trip to Russia, during which he invited Putin to Pyongyang and discussed military co-operation, including over North Korea’s satellite programme and the war in Ukraine.

Putin’s foreign minister, who last visited North Korea in 2018, will hold talks with his North Korean counterpart, according to the Interfax news agency. Russia’s Tass news agency reported that Lavrov may brief the North Koreans on the results of Putin’s visit to China, as well as discussing Putin’s potential visit.

Calling each other “comrade”, Putin and Kim in September toasted their friendship with Russian wine.

Courting Kim allows Putin, who says Moscow is locked in an existential battle with the West over Ukraine, to needle Washington and its Asian allies while potentially securing a deep supply of artillery for the Ukraine war.

US special representative for North Korea Sung Kim on Tuesday called relations between North Korea and Russia “worrying”, after the White House said last week Pyongyang had recently supplied weapons to Russia.

A growing number of reports by the US government and Western researchers have documented with satellite imagery what they say are North Korean weapons shipments to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday the Western allegations are not based on evidence. “They report about it all the time — they don’t provide any evidence,” Peskov said, according to Tass. Peskov said Russia will continue to build its relations with North Korea.

On Monday, the British Royal United Services Institute released dozens of high-resolution commercial satellite images that it said show two Russian ships with connections to Russia’s military logistics networks making multiple trips to North Korea.

The two ships have moved several hundred containers to and from a port in North Korea since August, the report said.

Though acknowledging it is impossible to confirm their contents, the report said containers of the same size and colour were later seen being delivered to a recently expanded Russian munitions storage facility near the border with Ukraine.

North Korea is heavily sanctioned over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. UN Security Council resolutions — approved at the time with Russia’s support — ban co-operation with Pyongyang on military issues, as well as in a range of other areas.

Reuters