North Korea’s Kim Jong-un arrives in Russia by special train for talks with Vladimir Putin

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un arrived in the Russian city of Vladivostok on Wednesday for a summit he is likely to use to seek support from President Vladimir Putin while Pyongyang’s nuclear talks with Washington are in limbo.

The armoured train carrying Kim – on his first official visit to Russia – pulled into the quayside station in Vladivostok, a few hours after crossing from North Korea into Russia.

After a brief delay while the door of Kim’s carriage was lined up with a red carpet laid out on the platform, the door opened and a smiling Kim stepped out.

Earlier, at a stop on the border, Kim told Russian state television he was hoping for useful and successful discussions with Putin.

“I hope that we can discuss concrete questions about peace negotiations on the Korean peninsula, and our bilateral relations,” he said through an interpreter.

Kim will sit down for talks with Putin on Thursday at a university campus on an island just off Vladivostok. It will be the first summit between the two leaders.

Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov told Russian media the summit on Thursday will focus on North Korea’s nuclear programme.

The meeting comes two months after a summit in Vietnam between Kim and US President Donald Trump broke down over disagreement on ending the North’s nuclear programme.

Kim Yong-chol, a North Korean official heavily involved in advancing the US-North Korean talks, was removed from a top post, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. He had visited the White House in January to meet Trump.

Now that negotiations with Washington are stalled, Pyongyang is looking for alternative sources of international support, including from Russia, and for possible relief from sanctions that are hurting the North Korean economy.

Ushakov added that Russia – one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council – would try to help “create preconditions and a favourable atmosphere for reaching solid agreements on the problem of the Korean peninsula”.

Ushakov pointed at a Russia-China road map that offered a step-by-step approach to solving the nuclear stand-off and called for sanctions relief and security guarantees to Pyongyang.

He noted that the North’s moratorium on nuclear tests and scaling down of US-South Korean military drills helped reduce tensions and created conditions for further progress.

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Ushakov said that Putin-Kim summit’s agenda will also include bilateral cooperation. He added that Russia’s trade with North Korea is minuscule at just US$34 million last year, mostly because of the international sanctions against Pyongyang.

Russia would like to gain broader access to North Korea’s mineral resources, including rare metals.

Pyongyang, for its part, covets Russia’s electricity supplies and wants to attract Russian investment to modernise its dilapidated Soviet-built industrial plants, railways and other infrastructure.

For Putin, the summit is also an opportunity to show that Russia remains a major global player despite being under sanctions itself over its intervention in Ukraine and allegations that it meddled in US elections.

But analysts predicted that Kim is unlikely to emerge from the summit with any substantial promises of sanctions relief. The meeting is likely to focus more on showing camaraderie.

Artyom Lukin, a professor at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, said Kim would want to be seen as a world leader who has international interlocutors besides Washington, Beijing or Seoul.

“As for Russia, the Putin-Kim summit will reaffirm Moscow’s place as a major player on the Korean peninsula. This meeting is important for Russian international prestige,” Lukin said.

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Meanwhile, Vladivostok has been seeing a number of unusually strict security measures. Maritime authorities said on Tuesday that the waters around Russky Island, off the southern tip of Vladivostok, would be temporarily closed to all maritime traffic.

The island has a university with a conference hall and is seen as a likely summit venue.

Separately, local media reported that some platforms at Vladivostok’s main railway station would be closed for several days, and that buses will be diverted from the railway station on Wednesday.

News website Vl.ru reported on road construction to even out the entrance at the railway station, possibly to allow Kim’s limousine to drive straight off the platform.