Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that North Korea had reaffirmed full support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine during talks in the coastal city of Wonsan, underscoring an alliance that South Korea believes may soon send even more Pyongyang troops to the front.

North Korea “confirmed its firm support for all the objectives of the special military operation,” Lavrov told reporters after meeting his counterpart Choe Son Hui, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. The ministers signed documents deepening a strategic partnership that already includes a mutual-defence pact agreed last month.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service estimates that more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers are already fighting alongside Russian forces and says additional units could deploy in July or August. Pyongyang has also pledged 6,000 military engineers and builders to rebuild infrastructure in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops staged a large cross-border incursion nearly a year ago.

Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said the accord “meets the changing needs over recent decades and strengthens traditionally friendly, good-neighbourly Russian–Korean relations to a qualitatively new level as allies.” He added that further high-level delegations would visit North Korea later this year.

Lavrov arrived in Wonsan on Friday from Kuala Lumpur, where he attended an ASEAN foreign-ministers’ meeting, and is due in China on Monday for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Russian media said the newly opened Wonsan seaside resort, the resumption of direct Moscow–Pyongyang trains and a planned bridge over the Tumen River could boost Russian tourism to North Korea.

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