Belarus’ foreign minister arrives in North Korea for talks expected to focus on Russia cooperation

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Belarus’ foreign minister arrived in North Korea on Tuesday as experts predicted that he and North Korean officials would discuss forming a trilateral anti-Western front also involving Russia.

Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov flew to Pyongyang from Beijing and was greeted by North Korean officials including Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jong Gyu, according to video shot by Associated Press Television News.

During his stay in North Korea, Ryzhenkov is expected to meet North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui and other senior officials. South Korean officials said Ryzhenkov is Belarus’ first foreign minister to travel to North Korea.

Neither North Korea nor Belarus has disclosed which issues are at stake during Ryzhenkov’s visit. But given the countries’ deepening ties with Russia, experts say his trip will likely center on building North Korea-Belarus-Russia cooperation to better cope with their separate disputes with the West.

During a meeting in Pyongyang in June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact vowing mutual military assistance if either country is attacked in what analysts called the countries’ biggest deal since the end of the Cold War.

The U.S., South Korea and others have accused North Korea of sending conventional arms to Russia to support its war in Ukraine in exchange for military and economic assistance.

Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, for his part, allowed Russia to use his country as a staging ground for the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, Russia moved some of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

During a meeting with Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi last September, Lukashenko suggested that Belarus could join Russia and North Korea in “three-way cooperation.”

The three countries have struggled with Western sanctions and deepening international isolation — North Korea over its advancing nuclear program, Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and Belarus over its support of the Russian invasion and its 2020 election that was widely criticized as fraudulent as well as human rights abuses.

North Korea and Belarus have had diplomatic relations since the early 1990s. North Korea opened an embassy in Minsk in 2016. Belarus does not have an embassy in Pyongyang.