Putin meets North's top diplomat, but Kremlin light on detail

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, greets North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on Tuesday. [AP/YONHAP]

Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui on Tuesday amid suspected deepening military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Putin received Choe late Tuesday and was briefed about the agreements she reached with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier in the day, but did not provide details regarding their meeting.

Earlier on Tuesday, Peskov said that Putin will visit North Korea at leader Kim Jong-un’s invitation based “on mutual agreement” at a “convenient time.”

Choe is scheduled to depart Russia on Wednesday, wrapping up a three-day trip that comes amid allegations that the North is supplying Russia with weapons to use against Ukraine in return for technological assistance with its banned weapons programs.

Earlier in the day, during their afternoon meeting, Lavrov thanked North Korea for supporting what Russia has called its “special military operation” in Ukraine and blamed the United States and its regional allies for “creating security threats” to the North, according to the news release from Moscow’s Foreign Ministry.

Lavrov also hinted at continued Russian support for the North, as well as “close and fruitful cooperation” within the United Nations and other multilateral organizations, despite U.S. and South Korean pressure for more decisive action against the North for conducting tests of ballistic missile technology that the Security Council has banned.

In response, Choe said that Pyongyang will thoroughly fulfill agreements reached at the summit between Putin and Kim in the Russian Far East in September.

Kim has escalated his verbal offensive against South Korea as his regime has moved closer to Russia, whose government on Monday called the North its “closest neighbor” and “partner.”

Pyongyang’s state media reported Tuesday that the North Korean leader has called for constitutional amendments defining South Korea as the North's “No. 1 hostile country” and committing the regime to “completely occupying” South Korean territory should armed hostilities break out.

While Kim repeated an earlier statement that his regime would not unilaterally start a war, he also said it would not avoid one if provoked and warned that a South Korean “invasion” of North Korean territory “by even 0.001 millimeters” would be regarded as a sufficient cause for war.

The North fired hundreds of artillery rounds into the Yellow Sea near the Northern Limit Line — the de facto inter-Korean border — from Jan. 5 to 7, leading the South Korean military to respond with live-fire exercises of its own.

Pyongyang also fired what it said was a solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile on Jan. 14 to test the gliding and maneuvering capabilities of its “hypersonic maneuverable controlled warhead” and the missile’s newly developed multi-stage high-thrust solid-fuel engines.

Kim has threatened that a war “will terribly annihilate” and “end” South Korea while also warning the United States “will suffer unimaginable disasters and defeats” if it becomes involved in a conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]