Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang on Thursday. The visit comes amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts by Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington to restore a meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, originally scheduled for June 12 in Singapore but later canceled by Trump. What happened Lavrov invited the North Korean leader to visit Russia. He told Kim that Moscow supported peace and progress on the Korean peninsula and highly valued a declaration signed by Pyongyang and Seoul. Earlier, Lavrov met with his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong Ho and others at the Supreme People’s Assembly building in the North Korean capital. Lavrov and his deputy Igor Morgulov paid their respects at a monument to Soviet soldiers in Pyongyang’s Moranbong Park. The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier Lavrov and Ri were expected to discuss “vital issues of bilateral relations and key international and regional issues.” Waning influence “Russia has waning influence in Northeast Asia. It’s been more or less sidelined. It’s not a central player in the Korean peninsula standoff like it used to be during the Cold War,” Seoul-based journalist Jason Strother told DW….