Kim Jong Un calls Russia’s war sacred and promises invariable support

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told Vladimir Putin he was convinced of Russia’s victory in what he called “the present sacred war for defending the security interests of the country and international justice.” The Korean Central News Agency published the reply on 15 September. Kim sent it on 14 September, answering Putin’s congratulations on the 78th anniversary of the North Korean state, which fell on 9 September. “I promise my invariable support to dear friend you and the fraternal Russian people,” the text said.

Kim also wrote that Pyongyang’s will was “firm without doubt to expand and deepen the joint work with the Russian Federation in a comprehensive way” on the basis of friendship, mutual aid and what he called alliance relations. He did not list the work. The two countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership in June 2024, when Putin visited Pyongyang. That treaty says each side will give military help without delay if the other is attacked. North Korea has already sent troops and conventional weapons to the Russian war in Ukraine.

South Korea’s intelligence service earlier put North Korean dead in that war at about 2,000, and later estimates of killed or wounded near 6,000. Those figures are Seoul’s. Kyiv has said as many as 50,000 more North Korean troops could be sent. Zelenskyy has used that prospect to press South Korea for air-defence systems. Kim’s letter does not confirm a new deployment. It does keep the political cover for one.

Two days earlier KCNA carried Kim’s reply to Xi Jinping. That note spoke of traditional friendship and a shared socialist cause. The pairing is the point. Founding-day messages are ritual. Using them to bless a war and an alliance in the same week is policy. Russia gets a public Asian partner that already fights. North Korea gets fuel, cash and technology it cannot buy from sanctioned markets. China gets a reminder that it is still in the triangle, even if the hottest file is the Russian one.

The language of a sacred war is older than this letter. It is the phrase Moscow uses for the Ukraine campaign inside its own propaganda. Kim adopted it whole. That adoption will be read in Tokyo and Seoul as a signal that the 2024 treaty is not a paper pact. Eisuke Mori’s arrival in Kyiv on the same weekend sits on the other side of that line. One speaker visits a battlefield parliament. One leader blesses the army that created it.

Nothing in the KCNA text commits a new unit, a new missile sale or a new bank channel. The operational details, if they exist, will not be in a greeting. The greeting is still a fact. On the anniversary of his state, Kim told Putin the war is sacred and that his support will not vary. That is now the published North Korean line for the next phase of the fight.