Russia & North Korea in talks: Western worries over potential weapons transfers

The foreign ministers of Russia and North Korea met Thursday in Pyongyang for talks expected to focus on how to boost their military ties, days after the United States accused the North of sending fresh shipments of munitions to Russia to support its war efforts in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov flew to Pyongyang on Wednesday for a two-day trip. During a reception speech later in the day, Lavrov said he thanked North Korea for its strong support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. The focus of outside attention to Lavrov’s visit is whether the two countries would provide any hints of how they would solidify their security cooperation or announce the timing for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promised trip to Pyongyang to reciprocate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia’s Far East last month. During his travel to Russia, Kim met Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s most important domestic space launch center, and inspected other key Russian weapons-making sites. That triggered intense speculation that Kim seeks sophisticated Russian technologies to modernize his nuclear arsenal in return for supplying conventional arms to refill Russia’s exhausted weapons inventory.
“After the historic summit between President Putin and Chairman of State Affairs Kim Jong Un at the Vostochny Cosmodrome on September 13, we can confidently say that the relations have reached a qualitatively new strategic level,” Lavrov said at the start of his meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Sun Hui on Thursday, according to Russia’s state-run Interfax news agency.