Pyongyang’s top diplomat also tells his Russian counterpart about a “nuclear plot” by the USA and South Korea against North Korea.

North Korea will support Russia until it achieves victory in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said in Moscow, as the United States warned that thousands of Pyongyang’s troops were on the Ukrainian border and could soon be deployed in combat.

During her meeting on Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Choe also accused the United States and South Korea of ​​planning a nuclear strike against her country.

“Our traditional, historically friendly relations, which have followed the time-tested path of history, reach today… a new level of relations of invincible military comradeship,” she said, praising the role played by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in this. The Russian president Vladimir Putin.

She said North Korea has no doubt that the Russian army and people under Putin’s “wise leadership” will achieve “a great victory in their holy struggle to protect the sovereign rights and security interests of their state.”

“And we also assure that we will stand firmly by our Russian comrades until Victory Day,” Choe said.

Lavrov spoke of “very close relations” between the militaries of the two countries and said these allowed them to solve important security tasks together.

The two did not address statements from the leaders of Ukraine, South Korea and their Western allies that Pyongyang had sent about 10,000 North Korean soldiers to Russia to fight in Ukraine.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there were up to 8,000 North Korean troops in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops crossed the border into Russia in a surprise invasion in August, and that he expected them to fight against Ukraine in the year the fight would take place in the coming days.

“We are deeply grateful to our Korean friends for their principled stance on the events that have now unfolded in Ukraine as a result of NATO’s push eastward and the encouragement of an openly racist regime to eradicate all things Russian,” Lavrov said.

Choe told Lavrov that the situation on the Korean peninsula could become “explosive” at any time given threats from Washington and Seoul, but offered no evidence to support her claims.

She said North Korea needs to strengthen its nuclear arsenal and perfect its readiness to carry out a nuclear retaliation if necessary.

On Thursday, Pyongyang confirmed it had fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) toward waters off its east coast. It was the longest flight time of a North Korean missile ever, authorities in South Korea and Japan said, raising fears about the reclusive nation’s development of advanced weapons.

Kim was present at the launch of the missile test and issued a warning to his enemies, describing it as an expression of his country’s determination to respond to external threats to North Korea’s security, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

On Friday, North Korea boasted that the ICBM it tested was “the most powerful missile in the world” and identified it as the Hwasong-19.