NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong Un has arrived in Russia by train, ahead of a key summit with President Vladimir Putin.
Kim met local officials at Russia’s Khasan train station near the border with North Korea.
Speaking to Russia’s state-owned Rossiya-24, Kim said on arrival that he is hoping for a “successful and useful” visit and would like to discuss “settlement of the situation in the Korean peninsula” as well as bilateral ties with Russia.
He then sat down with local officials as well as a Russian deputy foreign minister before setting off to the Pacific port city of Vladivostok for a summit with Putin today.
The visit is the first of its kind since his late father, Kim Jong Il, visited in 2011.
Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov told Russian media the summit will focus on North Korea’s nuclear programme, noting that Moscow will seek to “consolidate the positive trends” stemming from Donald Trump’s meetings with Kim.
MEANWHILE, Putin signed a decree to expedite citizenship applications from Ukrainians who live in parts of Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists, a move that could hold back a peace process to end years of bloodshed.
The decree states that some residents in the parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are under separatist control will have their applications considered in less than three months.
Those granted Russian citizenship would have to swear allegiance to Russia. Putin’s decision could trigger a major escalation of the war that started in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and shatter hopes for peace in the area that were renewed with the election of a new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy’s office said in a statement that the move confirms Russia’s role as an “aggressor state” in the conflict in the east and added that it “does not bring us closer to the main goal of stopping the war”.
ELSEWHERE, the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has challenged nations who label the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide, saying they should inspect Turkey’s Ottoman-era archives and “we have nothing to hide”.
Marking April 24 1915 – which is considered to be the start date of the genocide in which historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed – Erdogan said nations who accuse Turkey of genocide have a “bloody past”.
Turkey claims the toll has been inflated and considers those killed victims of a civil war.
Erdogan added: “When you dig into massacres, genocides, torture, you will find those who cry ‘genocide, democracy, freedom’ against us.”
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