Russian President Vladimir Poutine The Kremlin has offered its condolences to his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un over devastating floods that have claimed countless lives and damaged thousands of homes, the Kremlin said Saturday.
The North said Sunday that Putin had also offered “immediate humanitarian support” to aid its reconstruction efforts, to which Kim responded that he “could deeply feel special emotion toward a true friend.”
Pyongyang said this week it experienced record rains on July 27, which killed an unknown number of people, flooded homes and submerged swathes of farmland in the north, near China.
“I ask you to convey words of sympathy and support to all those who have lost loved ones due to the storm,” Putin said in a telegram to Kim.
“You can always count on our help and support.”
“Moscow’s message of sympathy was conveyed to the DPRK Foreign Ministry” on Saturday, the official KCNA news agency said, noting that it was immediately reported to leader Kim.
Kim thanked Putin for the move but said that “plans already established as state measures have been taken at the current stage.”
Regarding the offer, Kim said: “If help is needed, he will ask for it from the most loyal friends in Moscow,” KCNA reported.
Pyongyang said Wednesday that officials neglecting their disaster prevention duties had caused unspecified casualties, without providing details on the location.
There were no casualties on Saturday in the Sinuiju region, the area that Pyongyang said suffered “the greatest damage from the floods.”
North Korea and Russia have been allies since the North’s founding after World War II and have grown even closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
South Korean media, which has been providing emergency aid to victims, said this week that the death toll and missing could rise to 1,500.
Kim sharply criticized the reports, calling them a “smear campaign aimed at disgracing us and tarnishing” the North’s image.
North Korea is accused of violating arms control measures by supplying weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.
Natural disasters tend to have a greater impact on the isolated and poor country because of its weak infrastructure, while deforestation has left it vulnerable to flooding.
bur-kjk/fox
