North Korean and Russian foreign ministers to hold Moscow talks

Moscow: North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui will hold strategic consultations in Moscow with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry, told a news briefing the North Korean minister was on her way to Moscow and that details of her talks with Lavrov, including the exact timing, would be released later.

"In accordance with the agreement reached during the Russian-Korean summit meeting in Pyongyang in June, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Choe Son Hui, is arriving in Moscow on an official visit to hold strategic consultations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov," Zakharova said.

The visit, the minister's second to Russia in six weeks, comes as the Russia-Ukraine war appears to have taken a dangerous new turn, with NATO and South Korea expressing alarm that North Korean troops could soon be joining in on Moscow's side.

The United States and NATO say some North Korean soldiers are in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August and hold hundreds of square kilometres of territory. A couple of thousand more North Korean troops were heading there, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

North Korea's foreign minister arrived in Russia's far east on Tuesday on her way to Moscow, Russian state media said.

The Kremlin, which on Wednesday referred a question about her visit to the foreign ministry, has said Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to meet her.

Russian government officials have said Moscow has every right to develop its relations with Pyongyang as it sees fit, including under the terms of a mutual defence clause agreed earlier this year.