North Korea's Kim offers Russia full support on Ukraine
Lavrov expressed "sincere gratitude to Pyongyang" for its role in Kursk and support of Russia's operation, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. Moscow also said the two sides "agreed" that the West was to blame for "the growing tension" on the Korean peninsula. The ministry earlier posted a video on Telegram of the two men shaking hands and greeting each other with a hug. It said the talks were held in Wonsan, a city on North Korea's east coast where a massive resort was opened earlier this month — one of leader Kim's pet projects.
Kim told Lavrov that Pyongyang was "ready to unconditionally support and encourage all the measures taken by the Russian leadership as regards the tackling of the root cause of the Ukrainian crisis", KCNA said. The North Korean leader also expressed a "firm belief that the Russian army and people would surely win victory in accomplishing the sacred cause of defending the dignity and basic interests of the country". He lauded Putin's "outstanding leadership", the report said.
The two men otherwise discussed "important matters for faithfully implementing the agreements made at the historic DPRK-Russia summit talks in June 2024", KCNA said, referring to North Korea by its official acronym. Lavrov told Kim that Putin "hopes for continued direct contacts in the very near future", according to Russia's TASS news agency. He left Pyongyang and landed in Beijing on Sunday to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Foreign Ministers' Council, TASS reported on its Telegram account.
Ahead of Lavrov's recent visit, Russia announced that it would begin twice-a-week flights between Moscow and Pyongyang. Lavrov lauded Wonsan as "a good tourist attraction", adding: "We hope it will be popular not only with local citizens, but also with Russians." KCNA also issued a statement on Sunday on the meeting between Lavrov and his North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui, held a day earlier in the coastal city, saying that bilateral ties were becoming an "invincible alliance".
Moscow "expressed its firm support for the DPRK side in its just efforts for defending the security of the state" during the meeting, KCNA said. In return, Choe demonstrated "full sympathy and support for all the measures taken by the Russian government to remove the root cause of the Ukrainian conflict". TASS earlier reported that Lavrov thanked the "heroic" North Korean soldiers who have been deployed to aid Russia during the ministerial meeting.
Around 600 North Korean soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded fighting for Russia, Seoul has said. North Korea only confirmed it had deployed troops to support Russia's war in April, and admitted its soldiers had been killed in combat. Both sides "emphasised their determination to jointly counter the hegemonic aspirations of extra-regional players, which are leading to escalating tensions in Northeast Asia and throughout the Asia-Pacific region", Russia's foreign ministry said. The two heavily sanctioned nations signed a military deal last year, including a mutual defence clause, during a rare visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, Russia said on Sunday it took another village in the west of Ukraine's Donetsk region, as its troops advance towards the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia's defence ministry said Russian troops had captured the village of Myrne, calling the village by its Soviet name "Karl Marx". It lies close to the administrative border between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions. — AFP
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Times of Oman
6 hours ago
- Times of Oman
Will nuclear powers help keep nukes out of Southeast Asia?
Kuala Lumpur: As global powers vie for influence in Southeast Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is renewing its push towards nuclear disarmament. The ASEAN has long urged China, the US, the UK, Russia, and France to sign the Southeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty (SEANWFZ) accords. Adopted by ASEAN in 1995, the SEANWFZ (also known as the Bangkok treaty) aims to keep the region free of "nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction" while allowing for civilian use of nuclear energy. Following the ASEAN Regional Forum in Kuala Lumpur last week, the bloc's current chair Malaysia urged nuclear powers to "recognize the need to completely eliminate nuclear weapons." Beijing has already confirmed it will endorse SEANWFZ, according to Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan. "China made a commitment to ensure that they will sign the treaty without reservation," Hasan told reporters on the sidelines of an ASEAN diplomatic event last week. Will US and Russia also join SEANWFZ? Hasan also indicated that Russia, which owns the world's largest nuclear arsenal, will sign the agreement as well. While Moscow has yet to comment on the issue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Malaysia in early July for a series of high-profile meetings. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also in Kuala Lumpur last week for several multilateral and bilateral talks. However, it remains unclear if the US intends to sign the SEANWFZ. Both Washington and Moscow are keen to secure their influence in the region, including in the field of nuclear energy, as several ASEAN states are looking for outside partners to develop civilian nuclear programmes. A fading global order Partnerships with Washington, however, may not be as reliable as they once were. President Donald Trump's administration is pursuing a mercurial and shifting foreign policy, leaving Southeast Asia with the general sense that the rules and norms of the international order are crumbling, and the US' credibility and interest in the region are fading fast. Most Southeast Asian countries have reacted by advancing relations with Russia and China over the past few months, recognizing that Lavrov, Russia's top diplomat, may be correct in saying that the international community is fragmenting into a "multipolar world order." This leaves room for China to expand its diplomatic clout at Washington's expense. By endorsing the SEANWFZ, Beijing wants to show that it "cares about ASEAN at the same time as the US is potentially tariffing Southeast Asian states and trying to use them to isolate China, which they don't want to do," Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, told DW. "China loses nothing because there's little likelihood anyway it would need to use nukes in Southeast Asia," he added. Also, Beijing can now emphasize the contrast between its own policy and the AUKUS pact involving the US, the UK and Australia. The agreement between the three nations allows for the use of nuclear-powered submarines in the Asia-Pacific. China deploying submarines in South China Sea Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington, told DW that "China will absolutely not abide by the terms of the SEANWFZ." The SEANWFZ treaty commits its signatories not to move nuclear weapons through the region or its waterways. In recent years, however, China has been accused of "bunkering" its submarines in the South China Sea, a contested maritime area that several Southeast Asian states dispute with Beijing. In 2023, the Reuters news agency reported that China had begun to keep at least one nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine at sea at all times, with many patrolling the waters from Hainan to the South China Sea. Last year, the US military asserted that Beijing was preparing to deploy floating nuclear reactors near the artificial islands it has reclaimed in the South China Sea. Beijing wants to portray itself as reliableChina is believed to possess hundreds of operational nuclear warheads, and — according to the Pentagon — continues to expand its nuclear arsenal. "But that Beijing is willing to be the first outside nuclear power to sign the SEANWFZ is diplomatically smart and at least pays lip service to ASEAN centrality," Abuza noted, referring to the concept that ASEAN should be at the heart of broader Asia-Pacific diplomacy. "China is doing everything it can to portray itself as the responsible stakeholder in the region, committed to rules and norms. Beijing wants to paint Washington as the disruptor of the status quo and economic growth in the region," Abuza said. For political scientist and founder of the weekly ASEAN Wonk newsletter Prashanth Parameswaran, proper non-proliferation efforts would require more than just signing the SEANWFZ treaty. The vision of a regional nuclear-free zone has "historically carried normative weight" among some ASEAN states, including Malaysia, he told DW. However, Parameswaran points out that "no one in the region is under the illusion that this alone will necessarily restrain what nuclear powers will do or reverse the worrying state of the nuclear non-proliferation regime more generally."
Observer
10 hours ago
- Observer
Mediators toil to wrap up Gaza talks
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Observer
a day ago
- Observer
Britain and Europe are changing together
Many state visits are empty, symbolic acts that have little to no policy content or lasting significance. But every now and then, such a visit changes the shape of international relations. Could French President Emmanuel Macron's recently concluded trip to London be one of them? Macron's three-day trip, the first state visit to the United Kingdom by a European Union head of state since Brexit in 2020, had plenty of pomp and pageantry. But it also focused on policy and politics, which reflects a profound shift in the UK's circumstances since leaving the EU. During the upheaval of the Brexit psychodrama, there was little interest in constructive exchange, and the UK's relationship with Europe remained defined by its lurching departure from the bloc. But nearly a decade on, Donald Trump is back in the White House and has launched a trade war on the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shredded the European security order. And Chinese President Xi Jinping has resorted to threats of economic coercion – a striking reversal from the 'golden era' of UK-China relations proclaimed in 2015. Even more dramatic, perhaps, are the changes in the EU. The big policy initiatives launched during Macron's UK visit reflect the forces that are turning the bloc on its head. First, the EU is moving from a peace project to a war union. For most of its existence, the EU sought peace through economic integration. But Putin's war of Ukraine in 2022 reoriented the bloc towards security – a goal that has taken on greater urgency since Trump cast doubt on the United States' commitment to collective security on the continent. There is broad support for this new orientation. According to a recent opinion poll conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations, many Europeans favour increased defence spending, conscription and the development of a European or national nuclear deterrent. Against this backdrop, Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer took a bold first step towards establishing an independent nuclear deterrent with the Northwood Declaration, in which they agreed that 'there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by our two nations.' A second major change is the development of 'securonomics.' The EU economy is under pressure from Trump's tariffs and China's export restrictions on magnets and critical minerals. EU policymakers now talk of de-risking, diversifying and deepening the single market, rather than pursuing free-trade agreements. While the UK has made it clear that it will not rejoin the single market or the customs union, the question is whether it can persuade the EU that it can be counted on to help the bloc achieve its new trade goals, or whether it will be given unfriendly treatment because it is seen as posing a risk to those objectives. Domestic politics in Europe has also undergone a rapid transformation. It has been fascinating to watch Macron – once a poster boy for liberal universalism – reinvent himself as a champion of secure borders and protectionism, while taking a tougher stance on crime. This volte-face has seen mainstream European politicians shift focus towards defending national sovereignty – from Russia, China, Trump, and migration – while they try to contain populist parties such as Marine Le Pen's National Rally and Alternative für Deutschland. That is the backdrop for the ground-breaking deal that Starmer and Macron signed on migration returns. Starmer's approach to Europe is a marked improvement from that of former Conservative prime ministers Boris Johnson (who compared the EU to Napoleon and Hitler) and Liz Truss (who questioned whether Macron was a friend or a foe). Starmer has proved himself, particularly with his deft diplomacy on Ukraine, to be a reliable partner and stakeholder, regaining the trust of EU institutions and member states. One senior German policymaker told me how impressed he was by the UK filling the leadership vacuum created by Trump's disregard for Ukraine. In other words, the UK is widely seen in Europe as being 'part of the team' again. The EU-UK summit in May provided a clear framework for deepening the relationship, not least through a Security and Defence Partnership that paves the way for British participation in European defence programmes. But the UK government has remained far too cautious in other areas. Most notably, Starmer has been careful not to cross the Labour Party's self-imposed red lines: no freedom of movement, no customs union and no single market. Future historians may well wonder why Starmer did not aim higher. The changing international environment offers Starmer a clear opportunity to redraw Europe's political map, which would establish him as one of Britain's most consequential leaders. But to do so, Starmer must convince British voters that today's Europe is a different creature from the one they imagine: a defence community that is more focused on safeguarding the continent than on transcending the nation-state. And he must explain how the UK can help build this new European security order, so long as it banishes the Brexit mindset. As a post-liberal Europe emerges, Britain must stop clinging to the past and seize the chance to shape the continent's future in a way that advances its interests. That requires acknowledging that both the EU and the UK have entered a new era. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025
