Diminutive North Korean leader Kim Jong un was shown throwing himself on a coffin of a soldier who was killed fighting for Russia in a bizarre patriotic TV show on state media Monday. The program showed North Korean and Russian officials weeping as they viewed footage of Kim kneeling over a flag-draped casket of one of the hundreds of Koreans he had sent into Moscow’s meat grinder in Ukraine.

Kim paid public tribute to North Korean soldiers killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine, part of an effort to cement the two countries’ strategic defense pact.

Kim Jong Un shed a tear during a public tribute to fallen North Korean soldiers who died whilst fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine. The North Korean dictator watched footage of the battlefield whilst at a ceremony held to mark the first anniversary of a military treaty between Pyongyang and Moscow on Sunday (29 June).