(Adnkronos) – North Korea will host high-ranking officials from China and Russia tomorrow for the 80th anniversary of the Workers’ Party rule, a celebration expected to feature a large military parade to showcase its most advanced weapons. The event comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has secured crucial support from Russia after sending thousands of North Korean soldiers to fight alongside Moscow’s forces in Ukraine. Last month, Kim appeared alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin during a lavish military parade in Beijing.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang will lead the Chinese delegation to the 80th-anniversary celebrations, while Moscow will send the deputy head of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, to Pyongyang. The grand event will be a “public spectacle that will materialize the strategic consolidation of the China-North Korea-Russia axis,” Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center, told AFP. “From a more strategic point of view, Kim is demonstrating his value as a partner. By exhibiting advanced weapons and a powerful army, he is telling Beijing and Moscow: ‘I am not a client state; I am a valuable and capable ally,'” Lee stated.
Analysts predict that a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States, as well as new drones and hypersonic weapons aimed at threatening US forces, will be presented during the parade. “The war in Ukraine would have shown Pyongyang the importance of the ‘drone revolution’ in warfare, and now they are doing their best to catch up, presumably with Russia’s help,” said Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo.
Joseph Dempsey of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said that recently released images from North Korea’s defense exhibition provide a “good glimpse” of the upcoming parade. A new system visible in the images appears to resemble the Russian Pantsir air defense system mounted on a North Korean tracked vehicle, which is “potentially very noteworthy given the growing military ties with Moscow,” Dempsey told AFP. The festivities in Pyongyang follow Seoul’s assertion that a meeting between North Korea and the United States “cannot be ruled out” on the sidelines of this year’s Apec summit in South Korea.
