(Associated Press)
President Vladimir Putin says he’s willing to share details with the United States about his summit on Thursday with Kim Jong Un, potentially raising Russia’s influence in the stalemated issue of North Korean denuclearization.
The two leaders’ first one-on-one did not indicate major changes in North Korea’s position: Putin said Kim is willing to give up nuclear weapons, but only if he gets ironclad security guarantees.
However, Putin said Kim urged him to explain the nuances of North Korea’s position to President Donald Trump. Such an interlocutor role could be meaningful in light of Trump’s apparent admiration of the Russian leader.
Trump has said he “fell in love” with Kim, possibly indicating a proclivity to being swayed toward accommodation with the North Korean leader, although that declaration came before the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi in February that collapsed over mismatched demands in sanctions relief and disarmament.
At Thursday’s summit in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the North Korean border, Kim criticized Washington for taking “unilateral attitude in bad faith” at the Trump-Kim meeting that has caused a diplomatic standstill, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said Friday. Kim told Putin that the situation on the Korean Peninsula has reached a “critical point” where it could return to tensions and that peace and security will “entirely depend on the U.S. future attitude,” the agency said. Reads more