Moscow and Pyongyang Vow Stronger Ties as Joe Biden Preps for Summit with Japanese and South Korean Leaders

North Korean despot Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanged letters of support on Tuesday, pledging to create what Kim called a "long-standing strategic relationship," Pyongyang's state media said.

Marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Japanese colonial forces in the northern half of the Korean peninsula 1945, Kim celebrated the two country’s “invincibility and might in the struggle to smash the imperialists' arbitrary practices and hegemony," state newswire KCNA said.

"I am firmly convinced that the friendship and solidarity ... will be further developed into a long-standing strategic relationship in conformity with the demand of the new era," the news agency quoted Kim as saying. 

Putin was less effusive in his letter to Kim, making no mention of a “strategic relationship.”

"I am confident that we will continue to build up bilateral cooperation in all areas for the benefit of our peoples, in the interests of strengthening stability and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the Northeast Asian region as a whole," the Russian president said in his message, according to state news agency RIA Novosti. 

On Aug. 7, an internet security group said North Korean hackers had penetrated a Russian arms company that makes top-secret ballistic missiles and military spacecraft.

The U.S. has accused North Korea of supplying Russia with artillery shells, shoulder-fired rockets and missiles for its sputtering war in Ukraine. Both countries deny the charges. 

President Joe Biden is set to meet the leaders of South Korea and Japan at a three-way summit on Friday at Camp David to discuss North Korea and Ukraine.

North Korea’s vice foreign minister, Kim Son Gyong, blasted Washington for calling a U.N. Security Council meeting on Thursday over North Korea's dire human rights situation. 

He said the planned meeting "openly exposed the ugly hostile face of the U.S. filled with a sense of confrontation."

It will be the first security council meeting on human rights in North Korea since 2017.