Putin happy to act as Kim’s link to the US

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he’s willing to share details with the United States about his summit with Kim Jong Un, potentially raising Russia’s influence in the stalemated issue of North Korean denuclearisation.

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 iron-clad 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 Putin.

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 this week’s summit in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, about 120km from the North Korean border, Kim criticised Washington for taking a “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 yesterday. Kim told Putin that the situation on the Korean Peninsula had reached a “critical point” where it could return to tensions and that peace and security would “entirely depend on the US future attitude”, the agency said.

The KCNA said Kim and Putin held in-depth discussions to promote “strategic communication and tactical collaboration” over the security situation on the Korean Peninsula.

After the summit, Putin stressed that Moscow and Washington both want North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons. But, he said, the security guarantees Kim demands in exchange should be underwritten by multiple countries.