Russian lawmakers welcomed a delegation of North Korean women with rounds of applause on Wednesday, as the State Duma chief thanked Pyongyang for helping fight Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” in Kursk. 

Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Russian lower house, introduced the delegation of the Central Committee of North Korea’s Socialist Women’s Union at the State Duma, while paying tribute to North Korea and its role in repelling Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year.

Russia “will never forget” that North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces defended “our motherland as their own” against “neo-Nazi invaders in the Kursk region,” he