'Difficult journey to get home': Russian envoys leave North Korea on rail trolley | Watch

A group of Russian diplomats and their family members returned to Moscow from North Korea on a hand-pushed rail trolley on 25th February, Thursday because the COVID-19 pandemic has halted all passenger traffic between the countries.

'A difficult journey to get home'

Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a Facebook post that "since the borders have been closed for over a year and passenger traffic has been halted, staff members of the Russian Embassy in North Korea and their family members embarked on a long and difficult journey to get home."  

According to the Associated Press, the group of eight people took a 32-hour train ride, followed by two hours on a bus. They then boarded a rail trolley and pushed themselves for about a kilometre (half a mile) across the border into Russia. The ministry posted photos showing embassy employees with their children and suitcases on a trolley.

A video showed two people pushing the trolley across a railway bridge. The main "engine" was the embassy's third secretary Vladislav Sorokin, who pushed the trolley across a rail bridge over the Tumen River into Russia, said the ministry. Russia's Interfax news agency reported on Friday morning that the group later took a flight to Moscow from the far-eastern city of Vladivostok.

North Korea has claimed to be Coronavirus-free, and sealed its borders and halted passenger traffic with other countries. Outside experts are highly sceptical of the North's claim of having no COVID-19 cases.

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Meanwhile, according to a report in Business Insider, North Korean hackers attempted to breach the servers of the US-based vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, and its German partner BioNTech, in hopes of gathering scientific data that could be used to manufacture bootleg copies of a COVID-19 vaccine to sell on international black markets. North Korea's intent was likely to raise funds in foreign currency. The hermit dictatorship's domestic currency is mostly worthless outside its borders, the report said.

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(With AP inputs)