North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would \u201cfully support\u201d Russia\u2019s military as a \u201cfraternal duty,\u201d while Russian President Vladimir Putin described ties between the two nations as \u201cspecial.\u201d The comments, reported by state media KCNA on Thursday, underscore the close political and strategic alignment between Pyongyang and Moscow. Kim and Putin held a meeting on Wednesday on the sidelines of China\u2019s celebrations to mark the formal surrender of Japan in World War Two in Beijing. The pair flanked Chinese President Xi Jinping at a massive military parade for the first such gathering of the three countries\u2019 leaders since the early days of the Cold War. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin as they attend a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Beijing, China. Kim\u2019s Beijing trip offered his first-ever chance to meet Putin and Xi together, as well as mingle with the more than two dozen other national leaders who attended the events. State media photos showed Kim standing or walking with Putin and Xi side by side with a smile. \u201cComrade Kim Jong Un and President Putin exchanged candid opinions on important international and regional issues,\u201d KCNA said. Putin \u201chighly praised\u201d North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine and said the two countries\u2019 relations are \u201cspecial ones of trust, friendship and alliance\u201d, KCNA added. North Korea has sent soldiers, artillery ammunition and missiles to Russia to support Moscow in its war against Ukraine. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, China. \u2013 ReutersSouth Korea\u2019s intelligence agency estimated this week that some 2,000 North Korean soldiers sent to fight for Russia have been killed. It believes North Korea plans to deploy another 6,000 troops, with about 1,000 combat soldiers already in Russia. Kim and Putin discussed in detail the long-term plans for partnership and reaffirmed their \u201csteadfast will\u201d to elevate bilateral relations to a high level, according to KCNA. Last year, the two leaders signed a mutual defence treaty, which calls for each side to come to the other\u2019s aid in case of an armed attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would \u201cfully support\u201d Russia\u2019s military as a \u201cfraternal duty,\u201d while Russian President Vladimir Putin described ties…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27145,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}