The rarely traveled Kim Jong-un, who arrived in Russia on Tuesday, continues his official visit, and is this Friday morning in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in the Russian Far East. He was awaited by the regional governor and other officials on a red carpet at the city’s train station, located on the banks of the long river that runs through Siberia and marks part of the border between Russia and China. “In accordance with Russian tradition for distinguished guests, Kim was welcomed with bread and salt,” writes the Russian news agency TASS. The North Korean leader was then taken to the Komsomolsk aircraft factory, where Sukhoi warplanes and other equipment are produced, the agency reported, and then to the second factory, dedicated to civilian aircraft.
“No agreement has been signed, and this was not planned,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said on Friday. The United States suspected Russia of wanting to buy weapons from Pyongyang for the conflict in Ukraine, while North Korea is suspected of wanting to acquire technology for its nuclear and missile programs.
Kim, accompanied by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov and uniformed North Korean military officials, was shown on Russian state television carefully inspecting the cockpit of a fighter jet as Russian officials explained its capabilities via a translator. He then inspected the workshops where fuselage compartments and wings are manufactured.
With gestures of approval, Kim watched a demonstration flight of the Su-35 fighter jet, one of Russia’s most modern models, manufactured in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and exported in numerous countries. The factory also manufactures Su-57s and civilian aircraft.
“We resist together the pressure of the collective West”
Regional Governor Mikhail Degtyarev wrote on the messaging app Telegram that Kim had seen facilities producing parts for military planes as well as the Superjet-100 civilian plane, which Russia aims to produce at another factory in the city, without imported components.
“Our fathers and grandfathers fought together against Japanese militarism, our country supported North Korea in its fight against the imperialist ambitions of the United States in the 1950s, and today we together resist the pressure of the collective West,” Degtyarev said.
On Wednesday, during his first official trip abroad since the Covid pandemic, the North Korean leader met Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny cosmodrome (East), with the aim of displaying the links between their two countries, especially military. The two leaders mutually offered each other a rifle as a shining token of their alliance.
The Russian president, who is not accompanying his counterpart this Friday, mentioned Kim’s visit to Komsomolsk before attending a military “demonstration” of the Russian Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok, where the two men had already met in 2019.