Russian President Vladimir Putin will be represented at this month's G20 summit of major industrial and emerging economies in South Africa by Maxim Oreshkin, the deputy chief of staff of the presidential office.

North Korea and Russia are strategic allies. The East Asian nation supplied caches of weapons as well as some 15,000 troops, according to South Korean estimates, to aid the Russian war effort against Ukraine. The Koreans mainly fought in Kursk, successfully beating back a Ukrainian invasion of the Russian border region.