Seoul (AFP) – North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “warmly” welcomed Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on his maiden visit to the fellow Russia ally, with the two strongmen set to sign a friendship and cooperation treaty and ties “entering a new phase”, state media in both countries reported Thursday.

Besides supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine – around 2,000 North Korean soldiers are thought to have been killed – both nations are subject to Western sanctions and are accused of gross human rights violations.

Belarusian state media showed Kim and Lukashenko hugging at a lavish welcome programme on Wednesday involving an artillery salute and goose-stepping soldiers before a large flag-waving crowd at Kim Il Sung Square.

Kim “gladly” met and “warmly” welcomed Lukashenko at the start of the two-day visit, the Korean Central News Agency reported, which followed a meeting last year in Beijing.

Lukashenko said the “friendly relations between our countries, which date back to the days of the Soviet Union, have never been interrupted”, according to Belarusian state media BelTA.

“Today, as a result of comprehensive and steady development, we are entering a fundamentally new phase,” he added.

Lukashenko visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun – where Kim’s embalmed father and grandfather lie in state – to pay his respects, flanked by top North Korean officials, the report said.

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994 and has swung firmly behind Moscow since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, laid a bouquet on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The world"s “powerful” are “openly ignoring and violating the norms of international law”, Lukashenko said, according to BelTA, in apparent reference to the United States and Israel.

Independent countries must therefore cooperate more closely to “protect their sovereignty and improve the well-being of our citizens”, he added.

In another event, Lukashenko laid a wreath at the Liberation Tower and observed a moment of silence with Kim “in memory of the fallen fighters of the Soviet Army who dedicated their precious lives to the sacred war for Korea’s liberation”, KCNA said, referring to the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945 at the close of World War II.

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