Russia announced on Friday that it will help modernize and repair power plants in North Korea, a country that has long faced chronic energy shortages, only to retract the statement shortly after.

Energy minister Sergei Tsivilyov met his North Korean counterpart Kim Yu Il in Moscow last week and discussed ways to ramp up cooperation in the energy sector, Russia’s Ministry of Energy stated in a readout on Friday.

But the ministry subsequently deleted the readout from its website and social media pages, leading the state-run TASS News Agency to retract a related story.

The reason for the deletion remains