Kim-Putin summit: North Korea supreme leader meets Russian leader months after failed denuclearisation talks with Donald Trump

Vladivostok: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday at a summit designed to show that Washington is not the only power able to set the agenda on Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

The two men embarked on a day of talks on an island off the Russian Pacific city of Vladivostok two months after Kim’s summit with US President Donald Trump ended in disagreement, cooling hopes of a breakthrough in the decades-old nuclear row.

Vladimir Putin meets Kim Jong-un in Russia. AP

Putin and Kim, in their first ever face-to-face encounter, smiled broadly and shook hands outside the summit venue, a university campus, then sat down in a conference room to exchange greetings in front of the television cameras. Putin said he hoped Kim’s visit would “help us better understand by what means we can reach a settlement on the Korean peninsula, what we can do together, what Russia can do to support the positive processes now underway.”

“Without question, we welcome your efforts to develop a dialogue between the Koreas, and to normalise North Korean-US relations,” Putin said.

The summit in Vladivostok provides Pyongyang with an opportunity to seek support from a new quarter, Russia, and possible relief from the sanctions hurting its economy. For the Kremlin, the summit is a chance to show it is a global diplomatic player, despite efforts by the United States and other Western states to isolate it.

But with Moscow committed to upholding sanctions until the North dismantles its nuclear programme, analysts said the summit was unlikely to produce any tangible help for Pyongyang, beyond a show of camaraderie.

Putin’s last summit with a North Korean leader was in 2002 when his counterpart was Kim Jong il, Kim Jong-un’s father and predecessor. Kim Jong il also met in 2011 with Dmitry Medvedev, the Putin lieutenant who was then Russian president.

There was heightened security around Vladivostok in preparation for the summit, with an unusually heavy police presence, especially at the university campus on Russky island where the talks were taking place.