Vladimir Putin sceptical of solo US effort to sway North Korea
Following this week's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Russian leader says other nations would have to weigh in for a successful denuclearisation deal
Vladivostok — Russian President Vladimir Putin, after holding talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Thursday, said he thought US security guarantees would probably not be enough to persuade Pyongyang to shut its nuclear programme. Putin and Kim held a day of talks on an island off the Russian Pacific city of Vladivostok two months after Kim’s summit with US President Donald Trump ended in disagreement, cooling hopes of a breakthrough in the decades-old nuclear row. Putin, keen to use his summit with Kim to burnish Russia’s diplomatic credentials as a global player, said he believed any US guarantees might need to be supported by the other nations involved in previous six-way talks on the nuclear issue. That would mean including Russia, China, Japan and South Korea as well as the US and North Korea, in a long-standing format that had been sidelined by unilateral US efforts to broker a deal. “They (the North Koreans) only need guarantees about their security. That’s it. All o...
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