Putin hosts North Korean foreign minister on Russia’s ‘unity day’

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By Mark Trevelyan and Alexander Marrow

(Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korea’s foreign minister in the Kremlin on Monday at a time of mounting concern in the West that North Korean soldiers are about to enter the Ukraine war on Moscow’s side.

Video of the meeting showed the pair shaking hands for a full minute as Putin greeted Choe Son Hui. Putin noted that they were meeting on Russia’s National Unity Day, a public holiday, and Choe conveyed “sincere, warm, comradely greetings” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The United States says North Korea has sent some 10,000 troops to Russia, including 8,000 to the western Kursk region where Russia is still battling to expel Ukrainian troops who broke across the border in August.

Putin, who signed a treaty with Kim in June that includes a mutual defence clause, has neither confirmed nor denied the North Korean troop presence. He has said that Russia is free to implement the pact as it sees fit.

The Russian leader briefly alluded to the military situation in Kursk when he met youth volunteers earlier on Monday, telling them: “When the enemy is cleaned out from the region, there will be lots of work for you to do.”

In Kyiv, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said he had discussed with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock the “need for decisive action” in response to North Korean involvement in the war in Ukraine.

He said North Korean troops were waging “an aggressive war in Europe against a sovereign European state”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week urged Kyiv’s allies to stop just “watching” and start taking action to tackle the presence of the North Koreans.

The United States accused Russia and China at the U.N. Security Council on Monday of “shamelessly protecting” and emboldening North Korea to further violate United Nations sanctions.

In Seoul, South Korea and the European Union jointly condemned North Korea’s “unlawful arms transfers to the Russian Federation for its use in attacking Ukraine” and demanded that it withdraw its troops.

‘INVINCIBLE COMRADESHIP’

North Korea’s Choe has been in Russia for almost a week, having arrived in the far eastern port of Vladivostok last Tuesday on her second trip to the country in six weeks.

Last Friday Choe told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that their countries enjoyed relations of “invincible military comradeship” and that North Korea would stand alongside Russia “until the day of victory” in Ukraine.

The Kremlin had said last week there were no plans for Putin to meet Choe.

The U.S. and South Korea say North Korea has shipped ballistic missiles, anti-tank rockets and millions of rounds of ammunition for Russia to use against Ukraine. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied weapons transfers.

Putin earlier marked Russia’s national holiday by placing red roses at a monument on Red Square to Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, revered as national heroes for raising an army to liberate Moscow from a brief period of Polish and Lithuanian occupation in the early 17th century.

He met the children of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine and embraced one girl who had lost her father, telling her: “Russia relies on people like your dad.”

(Reporting by Alexander Marrow and Mark Trevelyan in London, Yuliia Dysa in Gdansk, Michelle Nichols in Washington and Hyunsu Yim and Hyunjoo Jin in SeoulEditing by Gareth Jones)