N Korea's Kim heads to Russia to revive old friendship

On the neighbouring mound to Mansu hill, where giant statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il look out over North Korea's capital, stands the Liberation Tower.

The star-topped stone obelisk has a bronze Soviet Union flag at its base and and a panel showing Soviet and Korean troops going into battle together against the Japanese.

The ties between Pyongyang and Moscow, once its most important ally, go back decades.

And after years of abeyance, current leader Kim Jong Un -- the son and grandson of the chiefs immortalised on Mansu hill -- is looking to revive links with nuclear negotiations with Washington deadlocked and as he seeks a counterbalance to China.

Kim is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok this week, reportedly on Wednesday and Thursday.

Few details have been released, but the summit -- the first between the two neighbours' leaders since Kim Jong Il met Dmitry Medvedev eight years ago -- comes less than two months after the Hanoi meeting between Kim and US President Donald
"It means that it was not the result they wanted to get."
"It is not acceptable."
"Many believe he has a romanticised view on the North's shared past with the Soviet Union, largely because of his romanticised view of his grandfather."