Monday 27 / April / 2026
Pyongyang: Two senior Russian politicians visited North Korea over the weekend, inaugurating a memorial to North Korean troops who died fighting against Ukraine and negotiating a new defence cooperation agreement set to run until 2031.
The two countries' military, political and economic cooperation has intensified amid Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Pyongyang offering military support to Moscow, not least to push Ukrainian forces back from the Russian border region of Kursk.
Moscow and Pyongyang already signed a mutual defence deal in 2024 amid a meeting between Kim Jong Un and President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang that June.
Two senior Russian politicians visited North Korea over the weekend, inaugurating a memorial to North Korean troops who died fighting against Ukraine and negotiating a new defense cooperation agreement set to run until 2031.
The two countries' military, political and economic cooperation has intensified amid Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Pyongyang offering military support to Moscow, not least to push Ukrainian forces back from the Russian border region of Kursk.
Moscow and Pyongyang already signed a mutual defence deal in 2024 amid a meeting between Kim Jong Un and President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang that June.
Belousov also presented military awards to North Korean servicemen who had fought against Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region of Kursk, parts of which Ukraine seized for several months in a counteroffensive.
North Korea had built a memorial in Pyongyang to its soldiers killed fighting against Ukraine.
Putin sent Kim a telegram to mark the opening, the Kremlin said, thanking Kim and the soldiers for their efforts to help reclaim the Kursk region for Russia.
The chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin attended an inauguration ceremony in the capital.
Details on North Korean troops casualties fighting for Russia are hard to come by, but South Korea has estimated last September that as many as 2,000 had been killed. Only two North Korean soldiers have been captured by Ukrainian forces.
