North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s decision to send troops to join Russia in support of its war against Ukraine has led experts to speculate as to what Russian President Vladimir V. Putin might send him in return.
Mr. Kim’s regime, squeezed by international sanctions, needs many things: hard currency, oil, expertise on developing advanced weapons. It probably does not need bears.
Yet Russian state media reported that Russia was sending more than 70 animals to North Korea, among them two brown bears, two domestic yaks, and an African lion. The animals — along with 40 mandarin ducks, 25 pheasants of various species, and five white cockatoos — are being transferred from the Moscow Zoo to the Pyongyang Central Zoo, according to a report Tuesday from TAAS, a Russian news agency.
The Russian Natural Resources and Environment ministry called the gesture “Vladimir Putin’s gift to the Korean people,” according to the news agency.
That gift the latest sign of the tightening bond between the two nations, an alliance that has become increasingly visible over the past few months. In June, they revived a Cold War-era mutual defense pledge and, according to the Pentagon, more than 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia in the Kursk region, where intense fighting against Ukrainian forces has been taking place since August.
Under Kim Jong-un’s rule, the humanitarian crisis in North Korea has deepened in the past decade after the expansion of the country’s military arsenal led to stricter international sanctions. North Korea also suffered badly from the Covid-19 pandemic and flooding over the past few years, leaving it in dire need of money as well as basic goods.
American officials have been concerned that in return for sending his troops to Russia, Mr. Kim might receive military assistance that would enhance the danger it poses to South Korea and the United States. Experts say improving the range of his intercontinental ballistic missiles is on Mr. Kim’s agenda. It is not clear if Russia has provided any aid of that kind, or has plans to do so.
Animals have long played a role in reinforcing political ties. China has for decades been presenting pandas to zoos in countries including Finland, Japan and South Korea. In October, two pandas from China were sent to the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. China has sent pandas to North Korea on multiple occasions going back as early as 1965, according to Chinese state media, although the most recent time it did so is unclear.
Mr. Kim has also used animals as tokens of friendship. In 2018, he gave a pair of white Pungsans, a breed of dog native to North Korea, to Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president at the time. Mr. Moon received the dogs during a visit to Pyongyang for summit talks, though relations between the neighboring countries have soured since.
The 70 or so animals from Moscow are currently in quarantine and will move to their new enclosures after they are acclimatized to their environment, according to TAAS, which said the zoo in the North Korean capital has been open since 1959. At least one lion was seen in its new enclosure, according to photographs from Russian state media.
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