At a meeting on Tuesday, David Lammy and Ronald Lamola agreed to strengthen collaboration on defence and security.

Listen to this article 5 min Listen to this article 5 min Britain's visiting foreign secretary, David Lammy, has expressed to his SA counterpart, Ronald Lamola, the UK's "huge concern" that North Korea has sent troops to Russia to join in the fight against Ukraine.

Lammy said this at a press conference with Lamola in Cape Town on Tuesday when he was asked whether the UK was concerned about Pretoria's warm relations with Russia and about the direction that the BRICS group was taking.

The context of Lammy's remarks suggested that he thought South Africa should "talk to your Russian friends about the North Koreans", as one SA official put it.

In his response to the same question, Lamola stressed that Russia and Ukraine should embark on direct peace talks and that SA would channel this message to Russia.

He said he had given Lammy feedback about his recent meeting with the visiting Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha. He and Sybiha had agreed that Ukraine would invite Russia to the next international meeting on Ukraine's peace formula. So far Russia has been excluded.

"Of course, we don't know yet what will be the response of Moscow to that," said Lamola....