North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui told the Russian press that Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s regime will stand by Russia throughout its invasion of Ukraine.
Choe spoke alongside Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Friday, during which she vowed the North Korean people will “always stand firmly by our Russian comrades until victory day,” according to a translation from the Moscow Times.
South Korea, the United States, the United Nations, and Ukraine have corroborated intelligence reports that approximately 8,000 Korean People’s Army personnel are set to move into the Kursk region, which is currently under occupation by the Ukrainian military.
Choe and Lavrov avoided explicitly addressing reports of the mobilized North Korean soldiers.
“We have no doubt whatsoever that under the wise leadership of the honorable Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian army and people will surely achieve a great victory in their sacred struggle to defend the sovereign rights and security of their state,” Choe said, according to the translation.
Lavrov thanked Choe and expressed gratitude to Russia’s “Korean friends” for maintaining a “principled position on the events that have unfolded in Ukraine.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin were joined by their South Korean counterparts on Thursday for a conference in Washington to address concerns about the Korean People’s Army joining the conflict.
The group of officials warned that North Korean soldiers risk becoming “legitimate military targets” but failed to provide any indication of how or if the U.S. and South Korea would take direct action.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is warning his country’s Western allies that there has not been sufficient backlash against the unprecedented military cooperation between Russia and the North Korean regime.
In an interview with South Korean channel KBS released on Thursday, Zelensky warned that Russia is using the North Korean military presence near Kursk to test the reaction of NATO and other international alliances.
“If there is nothing — and I think that the reaction to this is nothing, it has been zero — then the number of North Korean troops on our border will be increased,” he said.
