Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that North Korea needs “security guarantees” from several countries before denuclearizing.
“They only need guarantees about their security. That’s it. All of us together need to think about this,” Putin told reporters following a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to Reuters.
{mosads}Putin added that security guarantees from the U.S. likely would not be enough to get North Korea to denuclearize, saying that support also needs to come from countries including Russia, China, Japan and South Korea.
“I’m deeply convinced that if we get to a situation when some kind of security guarantees are needed from one party, in this case for North Korea, that it won’t be possible to get by without international guarantees. It’s unlikely that any agreements between two countries will be enough,” Putin said.
He added that the guarantees would need to confirm North Korea’s sovereignty and be legally binding, according to Reuters.
Putin, who met with Kim in the Russian city Vladivostok, also said he was “pleased” with the talks.
“We are all pleased with the outcome of the talks — both I and my colleagues,” Putin said, according to CNN. “Chairman Kim Jong Un is a fairly open person, leading a free discussion on all issues that were on the agenda.”
Earlier this year, Kim and President Trump held a summit in Vietnam that ended without an agreement on denuclearization.
Trump said at the time that North Korea wanted the U.S. to lift all of the sanctions against the country.
“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that. They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that,” Trump said.