US watching deepening Russia and North Korea ties 'very closely', Kirby says
I want to thank Karine in advance for her indulgence in all of yours. I do have quite a few things to get through. So could you comment at all on Putin's trip to North Korea and the possibility that there's going to be an agreement, a partnership agreement? Yeah. Look, I'm surprised that he went to North Korea after his so-called election, a real nail biter that that was. He was going to go on a little bit of a charm offensive here and that's what he appears to be doing. We're not concerned about the trip. What we are concerned about, Trevor, is the deepening relationship between these two countries. Not just because of the impact it's going to have on the Ukrainian people, because we know North Korean ballistic missiles are still being used to hit Ukrainian targets, but because there could be some reciprocity here that could affect security on the Korean Peninsula. Now, we haven't seen the parameters of all that right now, certainly haven't seen it come to fruition, but we're certainly going to be watching that very, very closely. That's a hypothetical I don't need to worry about because the president's policy hasn't changed.