Just after the pre-dawn touchdown, Russian TV showed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un greeting Putin in the dark, on a red carpet at Pyongyang’s airport, with the pair shaking hands and embracing before a motorcade took Putin along streets lined with Russian flags.

The trip is Putin’s first to the isolated nation in 24 years, with a recent confrontation between North and South Korean troops on the countries’ shared border highlighting regional security tensions.

Moscow and Pyongyang have been allies since North Korea’s founding after World War II and have drawn even closer since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to the West isolating Putin internationally.

The United States and its allies have accused North Korea of supplying Russia with much-needed arms, including ballistic missiles to use in Ukraine.

The North has denied giving Russia military hardware, but ahead of his trip, Putin thanked Kim’s government for helping the war effort.

“We highly appreciate that the DPRK (North Korea) is firmly supporting the special military operations of Russia being conducted in Ukraine,” Putin wrote in an article published by Pyongyang’s state media Tuesday.

Russia and the North are “now actively developing the many-sided partnership”, Putin wrote.

Both countries are under rafts of United Nations sanctions — Pyongyang since 2006 over banned nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine.

Putin praised North Korea for “defending their interests very effectively despite the US economic pressure, provocation, blackmail and military threats that have lasted for decades”.

He also hailed Moscow and Pyongyang for “maintaining the common line and stand at the UN”.

North Korea said the visit showed bilateral ties “are getting stronger day by day”, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

– US concern –

Pyongyang has described allegations of supplying weapons to Russia as “absurd”.

However, it did thank Russia for using its UN veto in March to effectively end monitoring of sanctions violations just as UN experts were starting to probe alleged arms transfers.

The United States voiced “concern” Monday about Putin’s trip because of the security implications for South Korea as well as Ukraine.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict and the border dividing them is one of the most heavily fortified in the world.

“We know North Korean ballistic missiles are still being used to hit Ukrainian targets (and) there could be some reciprocity here that could affect security on the Korean peninsula,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Highlighting those security concerns, South Korea said its troops fired warning shots at soldiers from the North who briefly crossed the border Tuesday and then retreated.

The South’s military said it believed the North Korean soldiers accidentally crossed as they were fortifying the border, but said some of them were wounded after detonating landmines.

– ‘Lonely bromance’ –

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Putin’s trip showed how he was “dependent” on authoritarian leaders.

“Their closest friends and the biggest supporters of the Russian war effort — war of aggression — (are) North Korea, Iran and China,” Stoltenberg said.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the international community to counter “the lonely bromance” between Putin and Kim by increasing arms supplies to Kyiv.

“The best way to respond to it is to continue strengthening the diplomatic coalition for just and lasting peace in Ukraine and delivering more Patriots and ammunition to Ukraine,” Kuleba told AFP.

North Korea is eager for high-end military technology to advance its nuclear, missile, satellite and nuclear-powered submarine programmes, according to experts.

The Kremlin released a document on Tuesday confirming that Russia plans to sign a “strategic partnership” treaty with North Korea.

Given North Korea’s chronic resource shortages, Pyongyang is expected to discuss ways to strengthen cooperation in areas such as tourism, agriculture and mining, “in exchange for providing military supplies” to Russia, a report from the Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy said.

Other issues including “cooperation on the deployment of North Korean workers or the supply of energy to North Korea — both of which would violate sanctions… are also likely to be discussed” behind the scenes, INSS researcher Kim Sung-bae wrote.

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The 71-year-old has ruled Russia since the turn of the century, securing a fresh six-year mandate in March after winning presidential elections devoid of all opposition.

In his inauguration speech, Putin said that Russia would emerge from the current “difficult” period victorious and stronger, as he took power for a record fifth presidential term.

“We will pass through this difficult, decisive period with dignity and become even stronger,” Putin said at his inauguration ceremony at the Kremlin, attended by an AFP journalist.

“We are a united and great nation,” Putin said in an upbeat speech, to applause from an audience of around 2,500 people including officials and military top brass.

“Together we will overcome all obstacles, achieve everything we have planned, and together we will win,” he said.

He said after being sworn into office that he viewed the presidency as a “huge honour, responsibility and sacred duty”.

The Russian leader vowed to ensure “sustained and stable development, unity and independence of the country”.

Putin thanked soldiers taking part in what Russia calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, more than two years after it began on February 24, 2022, at a ceremony attended by some of those fighting.

“We are looking forward confidently,” Putin stressed in his speech, which was aired on national television.

Evoking the country’s “thousand-year history” as he spoke in the Kremlin’s gilded St Andrew’s Hall, the president said that present-day Russians owed a debt to previous generations who achieved “such triumphs that inspire us today”.

He said Russians shared a “firm conviction that we ourselves alone will determine the fate of Russia for the sake of present and future generations”.

Russia is “not refusing dialogue with western states” and is ready to talk about “questions of security and strategic stability”, Putin said, “but only on equal terms, respecting the interests of each other”.

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Republicans in Congress have been blocking tens of billions of dollars in military assistance for Kyiv for months.

“It is necessary to specifically tell Congress that if Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” Zelensky said during a video meeting of Kyiv-organised fundraising platform United24.

Zelensky said it would be “difficult” for Ukraine to “stay” (survive) without the aid.

He said that “if Ukraine loses the war, other states will be attacked.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dragged on for more than two years.

Kyiv said Sunday that a Russian strike on the town of Gulyaipole in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed three people.

“Two men and a woman died under the rubble of their own private house, which was hit by a Russian shell,” the head of the region, Ivan Fedorov, said on social media.

Officials said another civilian, a woman, was killed in the city of Kupiansk, in the northeastern Kharkiv region that has seen increased attacks in recent months.

“A woman died under the rubble in an apartment on the fourth floor of a high-rise building,” Ukraine’s state emergency services said, adding that it was a residential building.

Authorities in the main city of Kharkiv said Russia launched another attack on Sunday, wounding five civilians, a day after a deadly attack there.

Russia, meanwhile, said a young woman was killed by a Ukrainian drone strike on the Belgorod border region.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said shrapnel hit a car with a family of six inside in the village of Shagarovka, some 35 kilometres (20 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

“Unfortunately, a girl died,” Gladkov said, without specifying whether she was a minor. “She died from her wounds on the spot.”

Gladkov said her father had a head wound and that two children were taken to hospital.

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The Kremlin has repeatedly spoken out in defence of the former president, who is facing a series of charges linked to election interference.

“As for the persecution of Trump, for us, in the current environment, it’s good because it shows the rottenness of the American system,” Putin said at an economic forum in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.

“It is a politically motivated persecution of one’s competitor.”

Putin, who served in the Soviet security services, added: “And this shows who we are fighting … As they said in Soviet times: ‘the bestial face of American imperialism.’”

Relations between Washington and Moscow, strained by a litany of issues under Putin, have hit new lows since the Kremlin launched large-scale hostilities in Ukraine last year.

Putin said he did not expect any change in US foreign policy stance towards Russia regardless of “whoever will be elected president” next year.

He accused Washington of stoking anti-Russian feelings among ordinary Americans.

“Current authorities have directed American society in an anti-Russian spirit,” the Kremlin chief said.

“They’ve done it and now somehow turning this ship in the other direction will be very difficult.”

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