Putin Thanks North Korea for Troop Role in Kursk During Moscow Meeting

Overview

• President Vladimir Putin met North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui in Moscow on July 19 and publicly thanked Pyongyang for sending personnel who took part in a recapture operation in Russia’s Kursk region.
• Choe conveyed a message from Kim Jong Un and said North Korea will unconditionally support Russia’s efforts to remove what she called the root causes of the Ukraine conflict.
• Putin praised the reported participation of North Korean soldiers and said he would "never forget their merits," framing the visit as a gesture of reciprocal political loyalty.
• All public accounts of the meeting and the troop dispatch come from Russian state news agency TASS and were republished by Japanese outlets, with no independent verification of the deployment provided in those reports.
• The exchange publicly cements closer Moscow‑Pyongyang ties and could deepen military and diplomatic entanglements in the region, so observers should watch for further troop movements, arms cooperation, or diplomatic responses from Western and regional actors.