Spontaneous decisions are likely to be made at the DPRK-USA Ha Noi Summit Viet Nam, Director of the Russian Strategy for Asia Center of the Institute of Economics at Russia’s Academy of Sciences Georgy Toloraya told the Russian News Agency TASS on 25 February.

DPRK leader Kim Jong-un (R) arrives at Dong Dang station in Viet Nam's Lang Son province (Source: VNA)

According to the veteran diplomat, the expectations from the summit are high and the parties are likely to try to pass a joint declaration outlining the DPRK’s particular steps on denuclearisation and reciprocal US moves, including a rollback of a number of sanctions.

However, he had doubts about the Asian nation’s total readiness to give up its nuclear weapon arsenal, which is needed to fully prevent any military interference.

Toloraya also doubted that the Trump-Kim summit will encourage fulfilling trilateral railway and energy projects between Moscow, Pyongyang and Seoul by exempting them from sanctions.

Russia is working with the Republic of Korea on including these projects in a draft to remove the sanctions, but “the Americans won’t be satisfied by Russia’s growing role and it carrying out trilateral projects,” he stressed.

The first-ever summit between US President Donald Trump and Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK Kim Jong-un was held on 12 June, 2018 in Singapore. The parties signed a joint document, in which Pyongyang committed to denuclearising the Korean Peninsula in return for US security guarantees. However, negotiations after the summit had yet to gain positive progress.

The second meeting of the two leaders is scheduled to be held in Ha Noi on 27-28 February.

(Source: VNA)