North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was shown three strategic aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces at the Knevichi airfield near Vladivostok, a Sputnik correspondent reported. | The leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) saw Russia's Tu-160, Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 bombers. These aircraft form the air component of Russia's strategic nuclear forces. In addition, Kim and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who met the guest, saw modern aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

■ Tu-160 bombers outfitted with novel cruise missiles — top brass (TASS)
■ Kim Jong-un inspects Russia’s hypersonic weapons (VIDEO) (RT.com)
■ Colossal Russia-North Korea deal for millions of shells and ammunition - Putin's mate move in Ukraine

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the peace plan proposed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, stating that it is a strategic attempt to defeat Russia and to persuade Asian, African, and Latin American nations to align with this idea. 💬 "We have always been told by the West that the only basis for any negotiations is the Zelensky formula … It starts with … food security, energy security, physical security of nuclear facilities, humanitarian issues. And then this formula moves to the very thing for which it was made up - strategic defeat of Russia to restore Ukraine's 1991 borders, to put the Russian leadership under the tribunal, to make Russia pay reparations," Lavrov said at a roundtable on the Ukrainian settlement in Moscow. According to the top Russian diplomat, Western countries have been attempting to enlist the support of "global majority countries," including Asian, African, and Latin American nations, in order to endorse this scheme. They characterize this approach as nothing less than a blatant deception.

Aleksander Solum (South China Morning Post) | More than 170,000 South Korean children were adopted by Western families in the turbulent post-war period – nearly 9,000 a year at times in the 1980s. Many were labelled orphans, despite their birth parents still being alive, and say their documents were falsified, making them question their identity | It was late spring and Uma Feed had just dropped her son off at a kindergarten in Oslo when her phone rang unexpectedly, bringing news she’d been searching for her whole life: the true identities of her birth parents. ● Adopted as a baby from South Korea in 1983, Feed grew up in Norway being told she’d been abandoned – a story she refused to believe but could only disprove in May this year, when at age 40 she was finally reconnected with her biological mother thanks to DNA testing. ■ A long letter and video message followed, revealing that Um Sul-yung – the name given on Feed’s adoption documents – was actually given up for adoption by her grandparents without the consent of her mother, who was hospitalised with tuberculosis at the time. “Every evening, my mum and my older brother had gone out to look for me. They were just wandering the streets,” she said. As it turned out, nearly all the information she’d received from the Norwegian adoption organisation was inaccurate, Feed told This Week in Asia. In response to queries, the organisation said it couldn’t comment on her case, citing privacy laws. Feed, who legally changed her first name to Uma in her twenties after rejecting the Norwegian one her adoptive parents had given her, is just one of the more than 170,000 South Koreans who were taken in as children by Western families in the decades following the Korean war. ■ And experts fear her story – of betrayal, deceit and the long search for the truth – is far from unique. MORE

As part of an effort to woo Vietnam to serve its geopolitical interests, US President Joe Biden is arriving in Hanoi on Sunday, nurturing hopes of signing a “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” with the dynamically developing Southeast Asian nation. | Washington is eyeing “swaying Vietnam to its side,” for it believes the US can use Hanoi as “a counterbalance to China’s influence in South East Asia,” Professor Anna Malindog-Uy, vice president of the Manila-based think tank Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute (ACPh), told Sputnik. However, there is no indication that Vietnam has any interest in joining the “US-orchestrated” coalition against China, consisting of Washington’s allies, Anna Malindog-Uy added. [...] Vietnam is vital to US foreign policy for several political, economic, and geopolitical reasons, the professor underscored. Firstly, the “strategic geographical location” of Vietnam in Southeast Asia (SEA) is important to the US. Vietnam boasts “close contiguity and nearness to major global shipping lines like the South China Sea (SCS), and it has a border with China,” Anna Malindog-Uy stressed.

■ A new chapter in the Vietnam-US relationship (Vietnam Investment Review) [...] With this latest engagement, the two countries have upgraded their relationship from a comprehensive partnership to a comprehensive strategic partnership. This is the highest tier of diplomatic relations, which Vietnam enjoys with only four other countries – China, South Korea, India, and Russia. The new partnership clears the way for greater economic cooperation, with a focus on innovation, technology, and investment.