Linked by a mutual animosity for the United States these days, Russia and North Korea on Wednesday announced plans to accelerate warming bilateral ties with an official “Year of Friendship,” Russian officials announced in Moscow.
The 2015 Year of Friendship also marks the 70th anniversary of the victory in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War as well as the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Korean Peninsula from Japanese colonial rule.
The rapprochement by Russian President Vladimir Putin complicates U.S. and Western efforts to isolate the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un, a rogue nuclear state still technically at war with U.S. ally South Korea.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the year will be marked by “a higher level of relations” with Pyongyang “in the political, economic, humanitarian and other fields,” according to a report in the Russian Interfax news service.
North Korea and Russia have been subject to international sanctions — Russia for its annexation of Crimea and support of Ukrainian separatists and North Korea for its human rights violations and drive to develop nuclear weapons.
The announcement was made on the same day that German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the latest Western leader to decline Mr. Putin’s invitation to an elaborate military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the war’s end. Mrs. Merkel will attend a more private ceremony in Moscow to mark the occasion shortly afterward, German officials said.
“The chancellor wants to commemorate the end of World War II and the liberation from National Socialism appropriately and with dignity,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. “In view of the Russian actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, participating in the military parade didn’t seem appropriate.”
The Russian-North Korean year of friendship would allow for the exchanges of delegates and contacts between state agencies through delegations, according to the state-controlled KCNA news agency in North Korea. It would allow for cultural exchanges and the hosting of events in Moscow and Pyongyang along with other cities.
Russian news media reported that Mr. Kim has accepted Russia’s invitation to attend celebrations that Mr. Putin will host this spring to honor the 70th anniversary of victory in World War II. It will be Mr. Kim’s first foreign travel since succeeding his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011.
The two countries have been growing closer in recent years with prospects for increased trade infrastructure developments. In April last year, Russia’s State Duma announced a deal that wrote off 90 percent of North Korea’s nearly $11 billion debt. The remaining $1.09 billion of the Soviet-era loans could be paid off over the next 20 years.
Russian State Duma members praised the deal and said the resolved debt issue could lead to restored economic and trade relations between the two countries.
Russian and North Korean leaders are discussing a joint venture to modernize North Korea’s railroad system, said Igor Morgulov, the Russian deputy minister of foreign affairs.
The venture “could become a pilot element of a larger project for connecting the Trans-Korean and the Trans-Siberian railways,” Mr. Morgulov told the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya in January, arguing that the improved rail links could promote closer cooperation between North and South Korea.
China had been seen as Pyongyang’s chief international ally, shielding its neighbor at times from pressure from the United States, South Korea and regional U.S. allies. But relations have cooled in recent years over a series of bilateral strains, even as Chinese President Xi Jinping has cultivated closer ties with the far-wealthier South Korea.
• Jonathan Soch can be reached at jsoch@washingtontimes.com.
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