Russia, N. Korea Working on System of Settlements in Rubles

The diplomat said in an interview with Sputnik the volume of bilateral trade is small, and the difficult situation was caused the UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea.

"Nevertheless, we have many opportunities even in these conditions to increase trade turnover. The main thing is to establish a system of settlements in rubles, and we are working on it," Matsegora continued.

He also added that Russia and North Korea expect to resume the exchange of delegations and high-level meetings, and Moscow hopes the visits will take place before the end of the year.

"Both we and our Korean counterparts are looking forward to the resumption of mutual visits, we have exchanged proposals on the matter. I hope the first visits can take place already at the end of this year," the envoy noted.

Commenting on regional politics, Matsegora said that Russia wants that relations between North and South Koreas normalize and believes that the current crisis will end in detente.

Russia is interested in the normalization of relations between the two Koreas and sincerely wishes that the North and the South solve all the problems between them on an independent basis, without outside interference and on the principles of national consolidation, the ambassador stated.

"Over the past decades, we have experienced several major and a dozen 'moderate' crises here. Each of them invariably ended in detente. I think it will be the same this time," he added.