North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is reportedly on his way to Russia on Monday for a possible meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, multiple South Korean media outlets reported.
Neither the Russian nor North Korean government has confirmed the two leaders would meet, but Putin reportedly arrived in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to state TV Russia 24. Vladivostok is where the Eastern Economic Forum is taking place this week.
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South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper noted Kim left Pyongyang late on Sunday and would meet Putin as early as Tuesday.
Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Monday that the department “expect[s] some type of meeting,” adding that Kim is “traveling to Russia” based on available information. He couldn’t provide more details on it.
In late August, U.S. officials warned that Russia’s attempts to secure a deal for weapons from North Korea for its war in Ukraine have “advanced,” with a possibility of a meeting between Kim and Putin. The United States initially uncovered that North Korea had provided Russia with infantry rockets and missiles late last year, while the U.S. is trying to pressure North Korea publicly out of a subsequent deal.
“Our current analysis is that discussions between North Korea and Russia, with respect to North Korea providing military support to Russia for its war in Ukraine — that those discussions are actively advancing,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters last week. “We also have information, as we have indicated publicly, that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, has some expectation that those discussions will continue as we go forward — including leader-level discussions, perhaps even in-person leader-level discussions.”
Sullivan did not specify what North Korea could get out of an agreement.
A week earlier, National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters that a deal would likely net Russia “significant quantities and multiple types of munitions from the DPRK which the Russian military plans to use in Ukraine,” adding that it “could also include the provision of raw materials that would assist Russia’s defense industrial base.”
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Kim, since assuming power in 2011, has infrequently left the country and hasn’t since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This reported trip would be his 10th, and the previous nine came in 2018 and 2019 as he negotiated with the U.S. and then-President Donald Trump over his country’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
Kim traveled to Vladivostok for a meeting with Putin in April 2019.
