Expect North Korea To Be on the Agenda When Trump and Putin Meet at Anchorage

North Korea will rank high among the talking points when President Trump sits down Friday with President Vladimir Putin at Anchorage for a summit at which Russia’s war against Ukraine tops the agenda.That’s because North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, who’s providing the Russians with millions of badly needed artillery shells and other equipment as well as thousands of troops, sees his alliance with Russia as central to his strategy for intimidating South Korea, as he promises more troops and arms that Russia badly needs in a war that’s gone on far longer than Mr. Putin likely envisioned.Mr. Kim has fortified the relationship with Mr. Putin during a phone conversation in which he promised to “fully support” all the Russians are doing while Mr. Putin “spoke highly once again of the support” provided by North Korea, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency. Mr. Putin specifically cited “the bravery, heroism, and self-sacrificing spirit” of North Korean troops in driving Ukrainian forces from Kursk, the Russian region bordering eastern Ukraine.Although North Korea’s 10,000-12,000 troops suffered tremendous casualties fighting in Kursk last fall, the North is escalating its role in the war with a pledge to commit another 25,000 to 30,000 troops made during a visit by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, to North Korea last month. “Ukrainian defense intelligence has reported seeing signs that Russian military aircraft are being refitted to carry personnel, possibly for the task of carrying tens of thousands of foreign troops to the front lines,” according to a report by a military scholar, Jared Martin, for the Modern War Institute at West Point. “Moscow is likely paying the impoverished North Koreans a minimum per head for their troops as well as providing North Korea with technology that Pyongyang cannot produce itself.”Mr. Kim’s younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, has chimed in, hinting vaguely but pointedly at the possibility of another summit between Messrs. Trump and Kim. The hint, clearly timed for Friday’s Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, comes in a statement carried in English by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency that shows the North’s contempt for South Korea’s president, Lee Jae-myung, but avoids speaking ill of America. Denying that her brother would be sending “a message to the U.S.” side via the Alaska summit, Ms. Kim acknowledged “the special personal relations between the top leaders” of North Korea and America — a reference to their three previous summits, in 2018 and 2019, during which Mr. Trump has said the two “fell in love.”She warned, however, that the idea of the North giving up its nuclear program, as long demanded by Washington, is a fantasy. “We are not at all interested in talks that are obsessed with the irreversible past, and there is no more need to explain the reason,” she said. “If the U.S. persists with the outdated way of thinking, the meeting between the top leaders will remain only the ‘hope’ of the U.S. side.”Ms. Kim also denied that the North has softened its policy toward South Korea, which her brother has described as the North’s “enemy.” Dashing Mr. Lee’s high hopes for dialogue, she said Seoul was “misleading the public opinion by saying that we have removed the loudspeakers installed on the southern border area.” South Korea, meanwhile, has shut down its own loudspeakers, which were broadcasting music and propaganda for the benefit of North Korean soldiers across the line, but Ms. Kim chastised Seoul for having “tried to mislead public opinion by saying that its ‘goodwill measures’ and ‘appeasement policy’” were restoring North-South relations.

Expect North Korea To Be on the Agenda When Trump and Putin Meet at Anchorage

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