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Vladimir Putin on mission to forge closer ties with North Korea


Vladimir Putin wants to forge closer ties with North Korea.
He wrote to the nation’s leader Kim Jong Un to suggest the two countries work on their bond and “expand the comprehensive and constructive bilateral relations with common efforts”.
According to North Korea's state media, KCNA, the Russian leader’s letter was delivered to Pyongyang on Monday (15.08.22) – North Korea’s liberation day.
The note is said to have gone on to say a union would help “strengthen the security and stability of the Korean peninsula and the Northeastern Asian region”.
In a separate reply, Mr Kim said as a Russian-North Korean friendship had been forged in the Second World War with victory over Japan, the “strategic and tactical cooperation, support and solidarity” between the nations had reached a new level.
It added they were bound by their common efforts to frustrate threats from “hostile military forces”.
KCNA did not specify the “hostile forces”, but it has typically used the phrase to refer to America and its global allies.
Mr Kim, 38, said in July North Korea was ready to mobilise its nuclear war deterrent “accurately” and “promptly” to face down potential military conflicts with the US or South Korea.
The same month, North Korea recognised two Russian-backed breakaway “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine as independent states.
Ukraine, which has been bombarded by 69-year-old Putin’s forces since February
immediately severed relations with Pyongyang over the move.
It comes as Russia’s National Guard says it has detained 50 suspected Ukrainian nationalists in the occupied south in a clear attempt to showcase to the Kremlin their efforts to stamp out underground resistance.
The National Guard, which usually dealt with protest rallies at home before the war, said in a statement on Monday (15.08.22) the unidentified people were being held in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
It added some of them had weapons stashes, incuding two dozen grenade launchers, 12 portable surface-to-surface missile systems, rifles and ammunition.
Authorities did not say if those being detained were facing charges, simply labelling them “suspected members of Ukrainian nationalist groups”.