Kim Jong-un, chairperson of North Korea's State Affairs Commission, sent a New Year's message to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the message, Kim gave the highest marks to the alliance and reaffirmed his resolve to maintain and strengthen it.
According to the Korean Central News Agency, in the New Year's message sent on the 27th, the chairperson addressed President Putin as "my dear comrade" and said, "Along with the days of 2025, DPRK–Russia relations have been further cemented into the most genuine alliance in which we share blood from the same trench and share life and death, joys and sorrows together, and their absolute solidity and strength have been inscribed even more clearly on the pages of the times and history."
The chairperson asserted, "Now no one (…) can break the relationship of the two countries' peoples, who are firmly united, or the unity of the peoples of the two countries."
Regarding DPRK–Russia ties in 2025, the chairperson looked back and said it was "a truly meaningful year in which our two countries, with mutual full support and selfless backing, steadily wrote a great new chapter in alliance relations of a new era."
Kim went on to stress that "(DPRK–Russia relations are) a common and precious asset that not only our generation but also our descendants must carry forward forever, generation after generation."
It is interpreted as making clear that the alliance between the two countries has become substantively stronger through North Korea's dispatch of troops to the Russia–Ukraine war, and that the alliance should not be shaken despite changes in the international situation, including discussions on ending the war.
The message is seen as a reply to President Putin's New Year's message sent to the chairperson on the 18th.
In that message, President Putin expressed thanks to the chairperson for North Korea's dispatch to Kursk, among other things, and said he was "confident that (going forward) we will carry out constructive cooperation on regional and international issues."