Putin takes Kim Jong-un for a spin after gifting fellow tyrant a Russian-made Aurus limousine as pair hail ‘fiery friendship’ and sign defence deal

Vladimir Putin took host Kim Jong Un for a spin through the streets of Pyongyang in a luxury limousine – one of several gifts the Russian President bestowed upon the North Korean leader today after the pair signed a new strategic partnership that included a mutual defence clause.

The Kremlin chief presented Kim with the boxy vehicle, manufactured by Russia’s Aurus automaker, along with a tea set and an admiral’s sword in a symbolic gesture of thanks for North Korea’s ‘consistent and unwavering’ support for his war in Ukraine. 

Footage taken in the leafy grounds of the Kumsusan state residence in the North Korean capital showed the moment Putin clambered behind the wheel of the cumbersome vehicle to offer his services as a chauffeur to Kim, who eagerly hopped into the passenger seat.

The short trip saw the pair share a rare moment away from their hordes of close protection bodyguards and security teams before returning inside to conclude talks. 

The granular details of their new strategic partnership were not immediately clear, but both leaders described it as a major upgrade of their ties, including terms that spanned areas from security to medical education.

Kim declared it the ‘strongest ever treaty’ between the two nations, raising the ‘fiery friendship’ between them at the level of an alliance, and vowed full support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Putin meanwhile said the deal ‘really is a breakthrough document’ that reflects a shared desire to move relations to a higher level, adding that it provided, ‘among other things, for mutual assistance in case of aggression against one of the parties to this treaty’.

The signing of the deal comes just hours after Putin was met with a reception fit for a king upon his arrival in Pyongyang this morning. 

After being greeted at the airport with a warm handshake and a hug by the pariah state’s dynastic dictator, a huge motorcade ferried the Russian President to Pyongyang’s main square where thousands upon thousands of adoring citizens were eagerly awaiting his arrival, along with a full military band and dozens of dancers.

The crowds erupted into cheers and let loose a torrent of bright coloured balloons at the sight of the Kremlin chief, who stood beside his host and took in the rapturous applause before they made their way through Kim Il Sung Square along a huge red carpet. 

The pair were saluted by a string of military guards atop snow-white horses before making their way past a gaggle of children clutching balloons and waving frantically at the smirking autocrats. 

Other revellers were seen touting huge portraits of the Russian President standing beside the Russian flag – the colours of which adorned the facades of buildings around the square. 

The ceremony also gave Kim a chance to introduce Putin to a host of key figures in his Politburo, including Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui; top aide and ruling party secretary Jo Yong Won; and his powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, who besides her role as chief propagandist has in recent months become a fiery-tongued mouthpiece of the regime.

After touring the square, Kim and Putin clambered into an open-top limousine, which whisked them away to Pyongyang’s Kumsusan State Guest House, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said, for their first talks together on North Korean soil.

The agency described their meeting as a historic event that demonstrates the ‘invincibility and durability’ of the two nations’ friendship and unity. 

Putin thanked Kim for the support and said the two countries would sign an agreement to boost their partnership as both ‘fight against the imperialist hegemonistic policies of the US and its satellites against the Russian Federation’.

The Russian President added that the ‘new fundamental document will form the basis of our ties for a long perspective’, according to Russian news agencies.

North Korea is under heavy UN Security Council economic sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile programmes, while Russia is also grappling with sanctions by the United States and its Western partners over its aggression in Ukraine.

Putin, making his first trip to North Korea in 24 years, thanked North Korea for ‘consistent and unchanging support of the Russian policies, including in the Ukrainian direction’, hailing ties that date back to the Soviet army fighting the Japanese military on the Korean Peninsula in the closing moments of World War II, and Moscow’s support for Pyongyang during the Korean War.

‘Our pilots flew tens of thousands of combat missions during the liberation war of 1950-53,’ Putin said.

Kim responded that relations between Moscow and Pyongyang are at a new high, even compared to Soviet times, and voiced hope that ‘the fiery friendship of the two countries will grow more monolithic,’ according to Russian state news agencies.

The North Korean leader was quoted vowing his country’s ‘full support and solidarity to the Russian government, army and people in carrying out the special military operation in Ukraine to protect sovereignty, security interests and territorial integrity’.

Kim has used similar language in the past, consistently saying that North Korea supports what he describes as a just action to protect Russia’s interests and blaming the crisis on the US-led West’s ‘hegemonic policy.’

It wasn’t immediately clear what that support from Pyongyang might look like.

He also hailed Russia’s ‘important role and mission in preserving the strategic stability and balance in the world.’

Putin’s visit to North Korea – his first since the early months of his initial presidential term – comes amid growing concerns about an arms arrangement in which Pyongyang provides Moscow with badly needed munitions to fuel Russia’s war in Ukraine in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that would enhance the threat posed by Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile programme. 

Putin also said in his published remarks that Russia and North Korea will develop trade and payment systems ‘that are not controlled by the West’ and jointly oppose sanctions against the countries, which he described as ‘illegal, unilateral restrictions’.

Moscow and Pyongyang have been allies since North Korea’s founding after World War II and have drawn even closer since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to the West isolating Putin internationally.

The United States and its allies have accused North Korea of supplying Russia with much-needed arms, including ballistic missiles to use in Ukraine, which mocked the growing relationship between the two nations. 

The North has denied giving Russia military hardware but, ahead of his trip, Putin thanked Kim Jong Un’s government for helping the war effort.

‘We highly appreciate that the DPRK (North Korea) is firmly supporting the special military operations of Russia being conducted in Ukraine,’ Putin wrote in an article published by Pyongyang’s state media on Tuesday.

Russia and the North are ‘now actively developing the many-sided partnership’, Putin wrote.     

Both countries are under rafts of UN sanctions – Pyongyang since 2006 over banned nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine.

Putin praised North Korea for ‘defending their interests very effectively despite the US economic pressure, provocation, blackmail and military threats that have lasted for decades’.

He also hailed Moscow and Pyongyang for ‘maintaining the common line and stand at the UN’.

North Korea said the visit showed bilateral ties ‘are getting stronger day by day’, the official Korean Central News Agency reported, and would ‘give fresh vitality to the development of the good-neighbourly cooperative relations between the two countries’.  

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the international community to counter ‘the lonely bromance’ between Putin and Kim by increasing arms supplies to Kyiv.

‘The best way to respond to it is to continue strengthening the diplomatic coalition for just and lasting peace in Ukraine and delivering more Patriots and ammunition to Ukraine,’ Kuleba told AFP.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Putin’s trip showed how he was ‘dependent’ on authoritarian leaders.

‘Their closest friends and the biggest supporters of the Russian war effort – war of aggression – (are) North Korea, Iran and China,’ Stoltenberg said. 

North Korea is eager for high-end military technology to advance its nuclear, missile, satellite and nuclear-powered submarine programmes, according to experts.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the two leaders would possibly sign a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership treaty’ to outline cooperation on ‘security issues’, state-run Russian news agencies reported.

North Korea could promise ‘to provide Russia with continuing supplies of artillery, guided rockets for multiple rocket launchers, and short-range missiles to support Russia’s operations in Ukraine’, Bruce Bennett, senior defence analyst at RAND Corporation, told Yonhap.

In return, it will want ‘Russia to provide a variety of advanced technologies’, he said, plus ‘a substantial flow of Russian oil and food products along with hard currency payments’.

Despite this, North Korea has described allegations of supplying weapons to Russia as ‘absurd’.

However, it did thank Russia for using its UN veto in March to effectively end monitoring of sanctions violations just as UN experts were starting to probe alleged arms transfers.

The United States voiced ‘concern’ on Monday about the trip because of the security implications for South Korea as well as Ukraine.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict and the border dividing them is one of the most heavily fortified in the world.

‘We know North Korean ballistic missiles are still being used to hit Ukrainian targets (and) there could be some reciprocity here that could affect security on the Korean peninsula,’ National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Highlighting those security concerns, South Korea said its troops fired at soldiers from the North who briefly crossed the border on Tuesday then retreated.

The South’s military said it believed the North Korean soldiers accidentally crossed as they were fortifying the border, but said some of them were wounded after detonating landmines.

It comes as an overnight drone attack set several oil storage tanks ablaze near the town of Azov in southern Russia on Tuesday, sparking a large fire, local officials said.

Ukraine did not immediately claim responsibility but it has carried out similar attacks on Russian energy facilities before, arguing they are fair targets given that they fuel Moscow’s military.

‘Oil product tanks caught fire in Azov as a result of a drone attack. According to preliminary data, there were no casualties,’ the governor of the local Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, said on Telegram.

Video published by the emergencies ministry showed thick smoke and flames billowing out of what appeared to be multiple oil storage tanks in an undisclosed location.

Officials did not say how many drones were involved in the attack.

Some 200 firefighters and emergency personnel were deployed to deal with the blaze, which spanned an area of at least 3,200 square metres (3,800 square yards), the emergencies ministry said.

The Rostov region sits directly across the border from Ukrainian and is home to the operational headquarters overseeing Russia’s invasion.

On the battlefield, Ukraine said that Russian forces were fighting to enter the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a flashpoint town of the war in the east whose capture could accelerate Russian advances.

Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk, where war-scarred Chasiv Yar lies, has borne the brunt of fighting over more than two years and the Kremlin claims the region is part of Russia.

‘The enemy keeps trying to advance to the microdistrict Novy in the town of Chasiv Yar,’ Ukraine’s military said in a briefing, adding that fighting was ‘currently taking place’.

Further south, it said Moscow’s forces were also pushing towards Pokrovsk, where they were closing in on a key road that would complicate supplies between strategic hubs in the region. 

Ukraine’s air force meanwhile said it had downed 10 Iranian-designed attack drones launched by Russian forces overnight.

South Korea this morning revealed Multiple North Korean soldiers have been killed or injured in a landmine explosion inside the Demilitarized Zone as South Korea fired warning shots. 

The South Korean military said it fired the shots to repel North Korean soldiers  who temporarily crossed the rivals’ land border for the second time this month.

They said an estimated 20 to 30 North Korean soldiers, while engaging in unspecified construction work on the northern side of the border, crossed the military demarcation line that bisects the countries at around 8.30am local time.

The North Korean soldiers then retreated after the South broadcasted warnings and fired shots, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, adding that they did not see any suspicious activity after. 

As they fled, an unspecified number of North Korean soldiers were injured in a landmine explosion, the Yonhap News Agency reports, according to the AFP.

‘North Korean military suffers multiple casualties due to a mine explosion during work,’ the report said, without giving further details.

The Joint Chiefs said they don’t believe the North Korean soldiers intruded the border intentionally and that the North did not return fire.

They noted that the North has been increasing construction activity in frontline border areas, such as installing suspected anti-tank barriers, reinforcing roads and planting land mines.