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Kim Jong Un meets Putin in Russia, vows “unconditional support” amid Moscow’s assault on Ukraine
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Seoul, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that his country offers its “full and unconditional support” for Russia’s “sacred fight” to defend its security interests, in an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine. Kim said North Korea would always stand with Russia on the “anti-imperialist” front.
The allies’ meeting at a remote Russian space launch facility came amid mounting concern that the two heavily-sanctioned countries may strike a deal to exchange weapons and satellite technology that would give Putin a boost in his flailing war in Ukraine, and propel North Korea more quickly toward its goals of launching spy satellites into orbit and obtaining a long-range nuclear missile capability.
Kim called North Korea’s relations with Russia his nation’s “first priority.”
Sputnik / Vladimir Smirnov / Pool via REUTERS
The leaders met for about two hours at a remote Siberian rocket launch facility for a summit that underscored how their interests are aligning in the face of their countries’ separate, intensifying confrontations with the United States. They later continued their talks in different formats, meeting for a total of four to five hours, officials said.
Putin, in his opening remarks, welcomed Kim to Russia and said he was glad to see him. Putin listed economic cooperation, humanitarian issues and the “situation in the region” among the agenda items for their talks.
North Korea test fires more missiles
The meeting came hours after North Korea fired two ballistic missiles toward the sea, extending a highly provocative run in North Korean weapons testing since the start of 2022, as Kim used the distraction caused by Putin’s war on Ukraine to accelerate his weapons development.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the short-range North Korean missiles flew about 400 miles each.
“We strongly condemn North Korea’s successive ballistic missile launches as a serious act of provocation that undermines the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula as well as the international community, and a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and urge that it be stopped immediately,” the Joint Chiefs said in a statement.
North Korea wants satellites, weapons tech and food
Moscow’s decision to hold the Kim-Putin summit at the cosmodrome, Russia’s most important domestic satellite launch facility, suggested Kim was seeking Russian technical assistance for his efforts to develop military reconnaissance satellites, which he has described as crucial in enhancing the threat of his nuclear-capable missiles. In recent months, North Korea has repeatedly failed to put its first military spy satellite into orbit.
Sputnik / Mikhail Metzel / Kremlin via REUTERS
Official photos showed Kim accompanied by Pak Thae Song, chairman of North Korea’s space science and technology committee, and navy Adm. Kim Myong Sik, who are linked with North Korean efforts to acquire spy satellites and nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarines, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
Asked whether Russia would help North Korea build and launch satellites, Putin was quoted by Russian state media as saying “that’s why we have come here.”
“The DPRK leader shows keen interest in rocket technology. They’re trying to develop space, too,” he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Asked about military cooperation, Putin said before their meeting that he and Kim would “talk about all issues without a rush. There is time.”
MIKHAIL METZEL/POOL / AFP via Getty Images
A senior South Korean official recently told CBS News that Seoul was concerned Pyongyang could seek technology for nuclear-powered submarines and satellites from Russia in exchange for badly needed weapons and ammunition for Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
But as CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reports, Kim’s impoverished nation needs far more than advanced technology. After years of diplomatic isolation and crippling U.N. sanctions, it’s also looking for allies, food aid, and even cold, hard cash.
Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said Russia could discuss humanitarian aid with the North Korean delegation, according to Russian news agencies.
Putin wants weapons for his Ukraine war
Putin welcomed Kim’s limousine, brought from Pyongyang in the North Korean leader’s special armored train, at the entrance to the launch facility with a handshake that lasted around 40 seconds.
For Putin, the meeting with Kim was an opportunity to refill ammunition stores that the 18-month-old war has drained. North Korea may have tens of millions of aging artillery shells and rockets based on Soviet designs that could give a huge boost to the Russian army in Ukraine, analysts say.
Kim also brought Jo Chun Ryong, a ruling party official in charge of munitions policies who joined him on recent tours of factories producing artillery shells and missiles, according to South Korea.
Kim said his decision to visit Russia four years after his previous visit showed how Pyongyang is “prioritizing the strategic importance” of its relations with Moscow, North Korea’s official news agency said Wednesday.
JUNG YEON-JE / AFP via Getty Images
An arms deal would violate international sanctions that Russia supported in the past.
Lim Soo-suk, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said Seoul was maintaining communication with Moscow while closely monitoring Kim’s visit.
“No U.N. member state should violate Security Council sanctions against North Korea by engaging in an illegal trade of arms, and must certainly not engage in military cooperation with North Korea that undermines the peace and stability of the international community,” Lim said at a briefing.
The United States has accused North Korea of providing Russia with arms, including selling artillery shells to the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Both Russian and North Korean officials denied such claims.
API/Gamma-Rapho/Getty
Speculation about their military cooperation grew after Russia’s defense minister visited North Korea in July. Kim subsequently toured his weapons factories, which experts said had the dual goal of encouraging the modernization of North Korean weaponry and examining artillery and other supplies that could be exported to Russia.
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Sen. Bob Menendez “put his power up for sale,” prosecutors say in closing arguments of bribery trial
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A prosecutor accused Sen. Bob Menendez in a closing argument at his bribery trial Monday of putting his power up for sale to benefit three New Jersey businessmen who allegedly bribed him with gold and cash.
The presentation by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni, which will continue Tuesday, prompted the New Jersey Democrat to scoff as he left the courthouse, saying: “The government is intoxicated with their own rhetoric.”
Minutes earlier, Monteleoni urged the Manhattan federal court jury to follow a trail of hundreds of emails and text messages between the businessmen, Menendez and his wife to see the alleged link between the businessmen and stacks of cash, gold and a Mercedez-Benz convertible that investigators found in the couple’s home in June 2022.
He said they’ll also be able to match fingerprint evidence linking the businessmen and Menendez to the bribes, including fingerprints on the tape that bound thousands of dollars in cash hidden in coat pockets, boots and boxes inside the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home owned by his wife, Nadine Menendez.
Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Monteleoni said the senator “put his power up for sale.”
The prosecutor said it wasn’t enough that the senator was one of the most powerful people in Washington as the ranking member and later the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he could block or approve hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to nations such as Egypt.
“He also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife,” Monteleoni said.
Monteleoni’s closing as the trial enters its ninth week in Manhattan federal court was about half finished when court concluded for the day.
As he left the courthouse, Menendez mocked the prosecutor’s closing, saying the government had “spent two hours on charts, not witnesses that came before the jury.” He added that Monteleoni had spent “two hours telling jurors about what they believe conversations should be that they never heard.”
Monteleoni said there was a clear pattern of corruption and told jurors to closely review communications between the senator, his wife and the businessmen to see evidence of bribes along with proof that they were trying to cover up their schemes.
Monteleoni said defense claims that gold in the house had mostly been inherited by Nadine Menendez was belied by serial numbers on gold bars which showed they had come from the businessmen who paid bribes.
“All this talk about Nadine having family gold is a distraction,” he said.
In return for bribes, prosecutors say, the senator took actions from 2018 to 2022 to protect or enhance the business interests of the businessmen — including pressuring a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect a halal certification monopoly Egypt granted to a New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana, and attempting to influence a federal prosecution of another New Jersey businessman, Fred Daibes.
Michael M Santiago / Getty Images
Menendez, Hana and Daibes have pleaded not guilty and are on trial together. A third New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty in the case and testified against the others during the federal trial, the second the senator has faced in the last decade. None of the defendants testified.
An earlier trial against Menendez in New Jersey ended in 2017 with a deadlocked jury. After the charges were lodged last fall, Menendez was forced to give up his powerful chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Nadine Menendez is also charged in the case, but her trial has been postponed until August while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. She also has pleaded not guilty.
As part of his defense, Menendez’s lawyers have argued that tens of thousands of dollars in cash found in the senator’s boots and jackets resulted from his habit of storing cash at home after hearing from his family how they escaped Cuba in 1951 with only the cash they had hidden in a grandfather clock.
His lawyers have also asserted that Nadine Menendez, who began dating the senator in 2018 and married him two years later, kept him in the dark about her financial troubles and assistance she requested from the businessmen.
Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, serving as a state legislator before serving 14 years as a U.S. congressman. In 2006, then-Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated when he became governor.
Several weeks ago, Menendez filed to run for reelection this year as an independent.
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Ukraine reeling after Russian missile strike on children’s hospital
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