RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN ENTERS INTO STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH NORTH KOREA. WHAT DOES IT INCLUDE?

Russia entered into a strategic partnership with North Korea after President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty into law between the two countries. The partnership, resulting from the treaty in June 2024, would include a mutual defence provision, reported Reuters, citing a decree published on Saturday. 

The development comes nearly five months after Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed an accord after a summit in Pyongyang. According to the summit, the two nations can call for each other's aid in case of an armed attack. 

Russia's upper house ratified the treaty this week, while the lower house endorsed it last month. The treaty is likely to come into effect as Putin signed a decree on that ratification that appeared on Saturday on a government website outlining legislative procedures.

  

The treaty galvanises closer ties between Moscow and Pyongyang since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Reports from South Korea and Western countries say North Korea has supplied Russia with weaponry. 

Ukrainian forensic experts say they have found traces of the weapons at sites of Russian attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that North Korea has sent 11,000 troops to Russia and some of them suffered casualties in combat with Kyiv's forces Russia's southern Kursk region. Russia has not confirmed the presence of the North Korean troops. 

  

Reuters - 

Russia said on Tuesday that a treaty it signed with North Korea earlier this year provides for "strategic cooperation" in all areas, but declined to be drawn on how a mutual defence clause in the agreement could be put into practice. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the treaty with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang in June, and said it included a mutual assistance clause under which each side agreed to help the other repel external aggression. Asked if this meant that Russia could be drawn into backing Pyongyang in a conflict on the Korean peninsula or that North Korea could side with Russia in a conflict with the West, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the treaty wording was "quite unambiguous" and needed no clarification. 

The pact "implies truly strategic deep cooperation in all areas, including security", Peskov told reporters. Tensions have been rising on the Korean peninsula after North Korea blew up sections of inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the heavily fortified border, prompting South Korea's military to fire warning shots.

(More to come)

2024-11-10T02:15:52Z