“We will always be with Russia,” Kim said, according to footage broadcast on Russian TV.
“An old friend is better than two new ones,” Putin said, quoting a Russian proverb and referencing the Soviet Union’s role in the Korean War.
Kim then “said goodbye to Putin, wishing him good health” and headed to his next destination, KCNA said, with Putin earlier saying Kim would oversee a display of Russian warships in the far eastern city of Vladivostok to “demonstrate the capabilities of the Pacific Fleet.”
‘Blood alliance’
Western countries have repeatedly raised concerns of a possible arms agreement between Russia and North Korea, as Moscow’s war in Ukraine grinds on.
“The summit signals a seismic change in northeast Asian geopolitics,” said Kim Jong-dae, a former MP and visiting scholar at Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies.
A stronger alliance between North Korea, Russia and China could become a “destabilizing force in the region,” and ammunition from Pyongyang could significantly impact the war in Ukraine.
“I think Russia has already tested the North Korean shells in battlefields and is now ready to expand its use going forward. And neither the U.S. nor South Korea has come to grips with the implications of such an arms deal between Russia and the North,” he said.
Russia became a pariah in the West after invading Ukraine last year and has looked to strengthen alliances with other leaders facing similar isolation.
Putin on Wednesday praised the “strengthening of cooperation and friendship between our countries,” while hosting Kim at a spaceport in Russia’s Far East.
He also said Moscow could help Pyongyang build satellites — after the North failed twice recently to put a military spy satellite into orbit.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said any cooperation would be “quite troubling and would potentially be in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions.”
Kim, who traveled overland to Russia in his bulletproof train, was accompanied by a military-heavy entourage, with top Russian military officials including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also involved in the talks.
“With Kim Jong Un’s latest visit to Russia, North Korea-Russia relations can be said to have completely returned to the level of blood alliance during the Cold War,” Cheong Seong-chang, a researcher at the Sejong Institute, told AFP.
“There have been many summit meetings between North Korea and Russia so far, but there has never been a time when North Korea brought in almost all of its key military officials like the one happening right now.”