North Korea vows to stand by Russia until ‘victory’ in Ukraine | War news between Russia and Ukraine

Pyongyang’s top diplomat also tells the Russian counterpart to the US and South Korea ‘nuclear plan’ against North Korea.

North Korea will support Russia until it achieves victory in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said in Moscow, as the United States warned that thousands of Pyongyang’s troops were on the Ukrainian border and could soon be deployed into battle.

In his meeting on Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Choe also accused the United States and South Korea of ​​planning a nuclear strike against his country.

“Our traditional, historically friendly relations, which have traveled the tried and tested path of history, today … rise to a new level of relations of invincible military comradeship,” she said, praising the role played by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

She said North Korea had no doubt that under Putin’s “wise leadership” the Russian army and people would “achieve a great victory in their holy struggle to protect their state’s sovereign rights and security interests”.

“And we also assure that until the day of victory, we will stand firmly by the side of our Russian comrades,” Choe said.

Lavrov spoke of the “very close ties” between the two countries’ militaries, saying this enabled them to solve important security tasks together.

The two did not address statements by leaders of Ukraine, South Korea and their Western allies that Pyongyang had sent about 10,000 North Korean troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that as many as 8,000 North Korean troops were in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops crossed the border into Russia in a surprise attack in August, and that he expected them to go into battle against Ukraine in the coming days.

“We are deeply grateful to our Korean friends for their principled stance on the events that have now unfolded in Ukraine as a result of the West’s course of pushing NATO eastward and encouraging an openly racist regime to exterminate everything Russian,” Lavrov said.

Choe told Lavrov that the situation on the Korean Peninsula could become “explosive” at any moment, given the threats from Washington and Seoul, but provided no evidence to support her claims.

She said North Korea needed to strengthen its nuclear arsenal and perfect its readiness to deliver a retaliatory strike if necessary.

Pyongyang confirmed on Thursday that it fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into waters off its east coast in what was the longest flight time yet for a North Korean missile, officials in South Korea and Japan said, raising fears of advanced weapons development by the withdrawn nation.

Kim was present at the missile launch and issued a warning to his enemies, describing it as an expression of his country’s determination to respond to external threats to North Korea’s security, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

On Friday, North Korea boasted that the ICBM it test-launched was “the world’s most powerful missile” and identified it as the Hwasong-19.