Tag: Russia

The long talked about summit between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un will happen next week likely in Vladivostok:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will visit Russia later this month for talks with President Vladimir Putin, Russian news service RIA Novosti reported Thursday, citing the Kremlin.
Kim will make the visit at Putin’s invitation, the news service and other Russian news outlets quoted the Kremlin as announcing in a press release. The report did not give further details, including dates and the venue of the summit between Kim and Putin.
Speculation has been rising that the two leaders would hold their first summit in Russia’s Far East city of Vladivostok next week when Putin travels to the Far East on his way to China for an international conference.
Japan’s Kyodo News, citing unidentified officials sources, reported that Kim plans to make a three-day visit to Russia beginning on Wednesday. Kyodo said that Kim plans to travel by train and hold a summit with Putin on Russky Island off the city of Vladivostok.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this news which I am not sure I believe is actually true:

China and Russia have sent home more than half of their North Korean workers, likely tens of thousands of people, according to reports submitted to the UN North Korean Security Council sanctions committee.

Russia’s report said that the number of North Korean workers with valid work permits decreased from 30,023 to 11,490 persons.
In its report, China, the strongest ally of North Korea, said more of half of its income-earning North Korean nationals had been repatriated.

A UN diplomat confirmed to CNN that one-page reports from Beijing and Moscow were sent to the committee on sanctions, as required by a December 2017 Council resolution demanding repatriation of all North Korean workers by the end of this year. 
Reuters first reported this story. CNN could not immediately confirm the figures given and China has previously been accused of trying to find ways around North Korea sanctions.China’s report also noted that it does not wish for the submission to be made public.

CNN

You can read more at the link, but it appears that there is no corroboration of the claims made by Russia and China that they actually sent these near-slave labor workers home. If they did that would be another major cut in foreign revenue to the Kim regime.

This could also help explain why Kim Jong-Un is reportedly planning a trip to Russia to meeting with President Putin.

As long as these companies are allowed to operate without facing consequences, the Kim regime will continue to be able to break sanctions:

A Russian tanker violated international trade sanctions by transferring fuel to a North Korean vessel at sea at least four times between October 2017 and May 2018, two crew members who witnessed the transfers said.

Such transactions could have helped provide North Korea with an economic lifeline and eased the isolation of the secretive communist state, whose leader, Kim Jong Un, is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam this week.
Primportbunker, the owner of the vessel the crew members said made the transfers, did not respond to requests for comment by telephone. No one answered the door when Reuters visited the building where Primportbunker has its headquarters in the port city of Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast.

On the four voyages between Oct. 13, 2017, and May 7, 2018, the Tantal tanker gave its destination as the Chinese port of Ningbo when it set sail, according to port documents seen by Reuters and tracking data from financial data company Refinitiv.
It then met up in international waters with a North Korean vessel to which it transferred its cargo of fuel, the two crew members who witnessed the transfers said.
The two crew said the fuel transfers took place when the Tantal’s transponder, which allows the vessel to be tracked at sea, was not operating. Shipping industry experts said this indicates the transponder was deliberately turned off or the Tantal had entered a zone not covered by ship-tracking radar.
On each occasion, the transponder started operating again when the Tantal was close to port in Russia, the two crew said.

Reuters via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.

This is why the Russians hurried to seize the Kuril Islands after World War II and have refused to give them back, it is all about keeping the Sea of Okhotsk a giant Russian lake:

A Russian government source said the document obtained by Kyodo News was drawn up sometime after this summer. It remains unknown whether the plan was approved by Putin. Russian media recently reported on the envisioned military buildup in the area.
By setting up a defense line around the islands in the Sea of Okhotsk, Russia is aiming to keep foreign vessels out of the waters where its nuclear submarines are deployed, while also securing the free navigation of the Russian Pacific Fleet, which is headquartered in Vladivostok.
According to the document, new shore-to-ship missiles systems called the Bastion, with a range of more than 300 kilometers (over 180 miles), and the Bal, with a range of over 130 km (over 80 miles), will be deployed on six islands and on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
Missile systems were deployed in 2016 on Etorofu and Kunashiri, two of the four islands and islets off Hokkaido that are claimed by Japan.

Japan Times

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Kim Jong-un may be heading off to Russia in the near future:

Pyongyang and Moscow are working to arrange an official visit to Russia for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a top Russian politician revealed Friday.

“(I) attended North Korea’s 70th foundation anniversary event on orders from President Putin,” Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of Russia’s Federation Council, told Seoul’s National Security Office chief Chung Eui-yong ahead of her meeting with President Moon Jae-in. “There was a meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-un. (Moscow and Pyongyang) are negotiating on the dates and location of the Chairman Kim Jong-un’s visit to Russia.”

Matviyenko’s comments confirm rumors that have been circulating for some time, regarding the possibility that Kim might be planning to travel to Moscow in the near future.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but this could just be more optics to make Kim Jong-un look more like a legitimate world leader by visiting Russia.  The timing of this will be interesting to see if he visits Putin before meeting with President Trump if a second Trump-Kim summit does in fact happen.

It looks like the Russian cargo ship suspected of sanctions violations was able to drop off its cargo somewhere before being investigated or this was all one big misunderstanding:

South Korea on Tuesday lifted a ban on the departure of a blacklisted Russian ship that it seized last week in the southern port city of Busan, following an investigation, Seoul’s foreign ministry said.

The Sevastopol was barred from leaving the country on Sept. 28 under a U.N. sanctions resolution after entering the country’s biggest port for repairs on Aug. 13, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“We have lifted the ban on the vessel as in our probe we didn’t found any violations committed by the ship. The cargo ship is now allowed to leave (South Korea) any time,” ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk said over the phone.

The ministry said that “putting on hold” the ship’s departure is different from its detainment, which is a measure taken in cases where a vessel is confirmed to have engaged in illicit activities, such as any violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I would not be surprised if US authorities walked ROK authorities down to the dock to force them to take action:

South Korean authorities have seized a Russian-flagged ship and its crew in Busan on suspicion they are violating U.S. sanctions on North Korea, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

The seizure came after concern about the Seoul’s lax enforcement of international economic sanctions on North Korea amid improving inter-Korean relations.

It is still uncertain whether the seizure was an independent decision by South Korea or a request from the U.S.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

This report makes me wonder if there is a arms for petroleum agreement going on between North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China?:

North Korea has reportedly sold arms and military equipment to Middle East countries in violation of the United Nations sanctions.

The Wall Street Journal issued the report on Saturday citing a secret report by experts monitoring UN sanctions against the regime.

The UN experts said in the report that they found new evidence of the North’s arms smuggling and illegal financial transactions.

The panel said that the evidence showed North Korea sold tanks, ballistic missiles and rocket-propelled grenades to Yemen’s Houthi insurgents and other entities via a Syrian arms smuggler.

The UN report said that North Korean arms experts had visited a munitions factory in Syria multiple times. It added that the North’s imports of petroleum products surged on the routes involving Russian and Chinese vessels.  [KBS World Radio]

Valentina Ivanovna Matvienko, head of the Russian Federation Council, leaves Pyongyang on Sept. 10, 2018, after attending North Korea’s founding day celebration a day earlier in this photo from the North’s Korean Central News Agency. The media outlet released a series of photos showing foreign guests leaving after attending the ceremony.  (Yonhap)

While the Moon administration continues to play nice with North Korea, the Trump administration continues to add new sanctions over the Kim regime’s nuclear program:

The United States on Thursday sanctioned two companies in China and Russia for allegedly facilitating North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The Department of the Treasury also sanctioned a North Korean individual in the latest set of sanctions aimed at denuclearizing the regime.

Thursday’s action particularly targets the revenue earned for the Pyongyang government by North Korean IT workers overseas.

The Treasury said it is sanctioning China Silver Star, which is “nominally a Chinese IT company, but in reality … managed and controlled by North Koreans.”

Also being sanctioned is the firm’s CEO, Jong Song-hwa, and its Russia-based front company, Volasys Silver Star.

“These actions are intended to stop the flow of illicit revenue to North Korea from overseas information technology workers disguising their true identities and hiding behind front companies, aliases, and third-party nationals,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but it appears that the Trump administration is not ready to sign up for “pretend denuclearization“.