Putin defends the military agreement with North Korea as a “sovereign decision”

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MADRID 25 Oct. () –

The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has defended that the military collaboration agreement with North Korea is part of a “sovereign decision”, after international concern has grown in recent days over an alleged deployment of North Korean troops that The Russian president avoided denying this in a public appearance on Thursday.

Putin has emphasized that it is up to Moscow and Pyongyang to decide when to apply the clauses of the agreement signed in June, including mutual military assistance. “It’s our business,” he declared, in an interview with the Rossiya 1 television channel collected by Russian news agencies.

Among the aspects contemplated in this new treaty is that one of the parties intervenes in the event that the other suffers “a situation of war due to an armed invasion of an individual country or by several nations”, an extreme to which Moscow could to hold on in the middle of the conflict in Ukraine, especially after the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region.

The South Korean Intelligence services estimate that some 3,000 North Korean soldiers have already arrived in Russian territory and that the number will increase to 10,000 in the coming months, although neither Pyongyang nor Moscow have confirmed or denied this.

Putin has assured that Moscow remains willing to end the war — “we are ready to seek compromises,” he said — although he has once again blamed kyiv for the lack of progress. For this reason, he sees it as premature to speculate on the possibility that the two parties will end up reaching an agreement.

Furthermore, he stated that the level of Western confrontation “does not decrease” in the Ukrainian context, where “weapons shipments continue.” The Russian president has assured that, despite this external collaboration, Russian forces continue to advance on the main combat fronts.