N. Korea reaffirms 'firm alliance' with Russia on summit anniversary

North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jong-gyu reaffirmed Pyongyang's commitment to deepening its military and diplomatic partnership with Moscow on Friday, marking the seventh anniversary of the 2019 Kim-Putin summit in Vladivostok, the Korea Times reported.

The statement underscores an accelerating military partnership that has drawn international condemnation: North Korea has deployed troops to support Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine, a move Kim invoked Friday as proof of the alliance's depth.

Kim posted his statement on North Korea's official Foreign Ministry website, calling the 2019 Vladivostok meeting a "new turning point" in the two nations' relationship. "Since the DPRK-Russia summit meeting in Vladivostok, the two peoples have developed the friendly and cooperative relations in a multifaceted way," he wrote, according to the Korea Times.

The statement catalogued a series of diplomatic milestones since that first meeting: Kim Jong-un's 2023 visit to Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome, where he held talks with Putin, and a 2024 summit in Pyongyang that produced the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, signed in June of that year.

Kim Jong-gyu said the 2024 treaty had elevated bilateral ties to a "high level of alliance" — language reflecting Pyongyang's effort to cast its relationship with Moscow as a full military and political alignment.

North Korea's dispatch of troops to assist Russia's Ukraine campaign was framed by Kim as an example of the "enduring nature of the firm alliance and militant friendship" between the two governments, the Korea Times reported.

"It is our invariable stand and will to elevate and develop the traditional relations of friendship and cooperation between the two countries onto a new higher level," Kim wrote in the statement's concluding passage, the Korea Times reported.