North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may visit Russia between spring and summer of this year, a Russian senator revealed amid reports that Pyongyang is in talks with Moscow to arrange a high-profile trip.
“The visit is being discussed, according to some information,” Senator Alexander Bashkin told RIA News. “You can expect it to take place in spring or summer of this year, but the time is yet to be agreed upon.”
He said Valentina Matvienko, the chairwoman of the Russian parliament’s upper house, raised the issue when she held talks in Pyongyang in 2018.
She extended an invitation to Kim to visit Russia, which he accepted, Bashkin added.
Kim Jong-un has never visited Russia although his father, the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, has been there twice, meeting with Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in 2001, 2002 and 2011.
The news comes amid unconfirmed reports that North Korea’s chief of protocol, Kim Chang-son, was in Moscow in late March.
Following a five-day visit, he departed to Vladivostok, raising rumors that the city might be chosen as a venue for a prospective North Korea-Russia summit, according to Yonhap News.
Pyongyang did not comment on the report. Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s presidential spokesman, said such trip has been “discussed and prepared for, for a long time,” according to TASS.
“We will brief you on it once we have concrete arrangements of place, time and modality of the meeting,” he said.