Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a visit to Pyongyang on Thursday.
Lavrov’s visit comes ahead of a planned summit between US President Donald Trump and Kim, who has also made recent diplomatic overtures to Seoul and Beijing.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Kim’s right-hand man Kim Yong-chol in New York late Wednesday.
Lavrov spoke to his US counterpart Pompeo by telephone for the first time on Wednesday ahead of the Secretary of State’s dinner meeting with Kim Yong-chol.
Russia, which shares a border with North Korea, has so far remained largely on the sidelines amid the flurry of diplomacy involving its neighbor. Last year, Moscow offered to mediate between Washington and Pyongyang when tensions between the two were high following a series of missile tests by North Korea.
Kim and Trump were supposed to meet in Singapore on June 12. But Trump canceled the summit on May 24, before backtracking a day later and saying that the meeting could still happen according to the initial schedule.
