North Korean leader Kim Jong-un vowed to “unconditionally support” Russia in its war in Ukraine and said he expected Moscow to emerge victorious, Pyongyang’s state media reported yesterday.
North Korea has become one of Moscow’s main allies during its more than three-year Ukraine offensive, sending thousands of troops and container-loads of weapons to help the Kremlin oust Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk border region.
Meeting top Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday, Kim said that Pyongyang would “unconditionally support the stand of Russia and its foreign policies in all the crucial international political issues including the Ukrainian issue,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
Korean Central News Agency via EPA-EFE
Kim “expressed expectation and conviction that Russia would, as ever, surely win victory in the sacred cause of justice,” KCNA said.
The two sides agreed to “continue to dynamically expand” relations, the state news agency reported.
Russia and North Korea signed a sweeping military deal last year, including a mutual defense clause, during a rare visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to North Korea.
Shoigu hailed the deal as “fully meeting the interests of both countries” during a visit in March.
About 600 North Korean soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded fighting for Russia, Sergei Shoigu South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun, citing the country’s intelligence service.
South Korea has also accused North Korea of sending significant volumes of weapons, including missiles, to help Russia’s war effort.
While Russia and North Korea are deepening ties, “prospects for restoring inter-Korean ties grow increasingly remote,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University.
Shoigu’s visit, his second in three months, also came just days after Ukraine launched a major drone strike on Russia, which “underscores the urgency of high-level coordination on security matters.”
“From Pyongyang’s perspective, active participation in countering drone threats could serve as a stepping stone to enhance its capabilities in modern warfare — suggesting North Korea may take a more assertive role in military cooperation with Russia,” Lim said.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
RSS