Putin gives Kim Jong Un a luxury limousine. It violates U.N. sanctions on North Korea

Vladimir Putin's own Aurus Senat limousine. (Reuters)

SEOUL, South Korea — Russian President Vladimir Putin has gifted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a Russian-made luxury limousine for his personal use, both countries announced Tuesday, in another sign of their expanding cooperation.

Observers said the shipment violates a U.N. resolution that bans supplying luxury items to North Korea, in an attempt to pressure the country to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and another senior North Korean official accepted the gift Sunday and she conveyed her brother’s thanks to Putin, the Korean Central News Agency said. Kim Yo Jong said the gift showed the special personal relationship between the leaders, the report said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin gave Kim Jong Un a high-end Aurus Senat limousine that he showed to the North Korean leader when they met for a summit in Russia in September. Kim was shown the Aurus limousine at Russia’s main spaceport.

Kim “liked the car, and so the decision was made” to present it to him as a gift, Peskov said, according to Russia's state-run Tass news agency. “North Korea is our neighbor, our close neighbor.”

Tass earlier reported that Aurus was the first Russian luxury car brand, and it’s been used in motorcades of top officials since Putin first used an Aurus limousine during his inauguration ceremony in 2018.

Kim, 40, is known to possess many foreign-made luxury cars believed to have been smuggled into his country in breach of the U.N. resolution.

During his Russia visit, he traveled between meeting sites in a Maybach limousine that was brought with him on one of his special train carriages.

During an earlier Russia trip in 2019, Kim had two limos waiting for him at Vladivostok station — a Mercedes-Maybach S600 Pullman Guard and a Maybach S62. He also reportedly used the S600 Pullman Guard for his two summits with then-President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018 and Vietnam in 2019. In 2018, Kim used a black Mercedes limousine to return home after a meeting with South Korea's then-President Moon Jae-in at a shared Korean border village. Among Kim's entourage of Mercedes vehicles, it's also believed that he