2023 North Korea–Russia summit

The 2023 North Korea–Russia summit was a summit meeting between North Korea and Russia where North Korean General Secretary Kim Jong Un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 13 September 2023. The meeting was held at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East. It was part of a visit by Kim Jong Un between 12–17 September.

It is Kim Jong Un's first foreign visit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in North Korea in 2020.

Background
In early September 2023, it was reported that Kim Jong Un would be visiting Russia sometime that month. On 10 September, the meeting was confirmed by both sides after Kim Jong Un departed Pyongyang with his personal armoured train that he had previously used to visit Russia in 2019.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu attended official celebrations of the 70th anniversary of "Victory Day" in Pyongyang a month prior. Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has faced severe labor shortages, lack of international support and ammunition shortages. There was speculation that the meeting was to centre around the possibility of Russia receiving large amounts of North Korean ammunition stockpiles from the Soviet era, in exchange for Russian help in developing technology and resource aid.

Visit
Kim arrived in the North Korean leaders' train in Khasan, Primorsky Krai, Russia on 12 September, where he met with Minister of National Resources and Environment Alexander Kozlov and Primorsky Krai governor Oleg Kozhemyako. He then left, and continued, arriving at the Vostochny Cosmodrome on 13 September, where he met with Putin. During the meeting, Kim once again gave his support for Russia's "sacred fight" against the west, expressing his "...support for all the measures taken by the Russian government, and [he] takes this opportunity again to affirm that [he] will always be with Russia." When asked if Russia would help North Korea build satellites, Putin said "that's why [they] came here."

Kim, after the summit, visited an advanced fighter jet manufacturing plant under sanctions, in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Russia on September 15.

On 16 September, Kim visited the Mariinsky Theater in Vladivostok, where he watched Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty. He also visited the Far Eastern Federal University on 17 September, as well as the Primorsky Oceanarium. Kim's trip concluded that day.

Reactions
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko proposed a three-way cooperation pact with Russia and North Korea.

United States government officials expressed concern with the visit, already seeing North Korea's open support for Russia, and warned that a circumvention of sanctions in the context of military support in the Russian invasion of Ukraine would prompt the United States to identify the methods used to "at least limit their ability to be effective". United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that "any form of cooperation of any country with North Korea must respect the sanctions regime that was imposed by the Security Council."