Kim Jong-un, the North Korean Chairperson of the State Affairs Commission, sent a New Year's message to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the message, he rated the alliance relationship as the highest and reaffirmed the resolve to maintain and strengthen it.
According to the Korean Central News Agency, the Chairperson said in the New Year's message sent on the 27th that he addressed President Putin as "my dear comrade" and said, "Along with the days of 2025, the DPRK-Russia relationship has been further cemented into the truest alliance that shares blood in the same trench and shares life and death and joys and sorrows, and its absolute solidity and might have been inscribed more clearly on the pages of the times and history."
The Chairperson asserted, "Now no one (snip) can break the relationship of the two peoples who are firmly united and the unity of the peoples of both countries."
Regarding the DPRK-Russia relationship 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 turning point in a new era of alliance relations."
He went on to stress that "(the DPRK-Russia relationship) is a common and precious asset that not only in the present era but also our descendants must carry forward forever from generation to generation."
It is interpreted as making clear that the alliance of the two countries has become substantively solidified by North Korea's dispatch of troops to the Russia-Ukraine war, and that the alliance must not be shaken despite changes in the international situation, such as discussions on ending the war.
The message is seen as a reply to the New Year's message President Putin sent to the Chairperson on the 18th.
In that message at the time, President Putin expressed gratitude to the Chairperson for North Korea's troop dispatch to Kursk and said he was "confident that (going forward) we will conduct constructive cooperation on regional and international issues."