North Korea’s state media, KCNA, said Mr Putin’s letter suggested the pair work to “expand comprehensive and constructive bilateral relations with joint efforts”. Delivered in Pyongyang on North Korea’s liberation day, he went on to say that a union would help “enhance the security and stability of the Korean Peninsula and the Northeast Asian region.” In a separate letter of response, Mr Kim said that since the Russia-North Korea friendship was forged in World War II with victory over Japan, “strategic and tactical cooperation, support and solidarity” between the two countries had reach a new level. . Their joint efforts to thwart threats and provocations from “hostile military forces,” he said, bonded them. KCNA did not specify “hostile forces” but usually uses that term to refer to the US and its allies. In July, Kim said North Korea was ready to mobilize its nuclear war deterrent “accurately and timely” in the face of possible military conflicts with the US or South Korea. Also in July, North Korea recognized two Russian-backed breakaway “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine as independent states, and officials raised the prospect of sending North Korean workers to the regions to help with construction and other labor. Ukraine, which has been resisting a Russian invasion since February – described by Moscow as a “special military operation” – immediately cut ties with Pyongyang over the move.
