N Korea, Russia bound in ‘blood’ of war, Kim tells Putin in New Year note

Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, addressed Vladimir Putin as he greeted the Russian president in his country and said that his country’s ties with Russia had been strengthened by “sharing blood, life, and death in the same trench” during the Ukraine war.

Kim’s message came shortly after President Putin’s own New Year’s greeting on December 18 to the North Korean leader, which praised Pyongyang’s troops’ “heroic” role in the western Kursk region and “clearly demonstrated the invincible friendship” between the two nations, according to state media.

Kim called the bilateral relations between Moscow and Pyongyang a “precious common asset that can be carried forward forever not only in the present era but also by posterity generation after generation in his message to Putin, which was released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, Kim said, “Now no one can break the bonds between the two countries’ peoples and their unity.”

According to South Korean and Western intelligence agencies, North Korea has deployed thousands of troops to help Moscow fight Ukraine.

In April, North Korea officially confirmed that it had troops deployed to support Russia’s military assault on Ukraine and that its soldiers had been killed in battle.

Following a Ukrainian incursion, Kim acknowledged earlier this month that at least nine members of an engineering regiment were killed while North Korean troops were stationed in Russia’s Kursk region to clear landmines in August 2025.

One day after Kim instructed his officials to increase the production of missiles and establish more munitions factories, Kim sent his New Year’s message to Putin.

In order to deter what Kim perceives as threats from the United States and South Korea, North Korea has increased missile testing in recent years. Analysts claim this is done to increase the accuracy of its arsenal of short-, medium-, and long-range rockets. According to the analysts, increased weapons testing may be a result of North Korea’s exports of military equipment to Russia.