Vladimir Putin faces the prospect of a major clash with concerned Russian parents over his latest plot to strengthen Moscow’s partnership with Pyongyang.

In the latest development, the Russian President is now believed to be planning to send Russian children to a summer camp in North Korea.

The head of Putin’s Movement of the First Youth Organisation, Grigory Gurov, unveiled the plan amid opposition from Russian parents as he insisted that “conditions there are good.”

The first group of children is expected to be sent to North Korea in July alongside some counsellors.

The Russian children will be the first delegation to be accommodated at the Songdowon camp, located on North Korea’s eastern shore, since 2019.

Gurov drew parallels between Songdowon and the Artek summer camp Moscow set up in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.

The European Union imposed sanctions on the camp after it emerged that Ukrainian children from other occupied regions were being brought to the area.

Kyiv accused Russia of enrolling Ukrainian children into re-education programmes based on Russian propaganda.

The camp, which was built by Kim Jong-in’s grandfather in 1960, has been described as a bizarre mix between a boarding house and a Disney-themed water park with frequent blackouts and 6 am wake-up calls.

According to Artem Samsonov, a former Communist Party official who visited the camp in 2015 before he was arrested for molesting a child in 2022, children would spend the day exercising and cleaning statues of Kim’s grandfather and father.

Detailing his experience on the blogging platform Livejournal, Samsonov said: “We received special attention and were given not brooms, but special pads and were allowed to wipe the statue itself.”

He said the children would undertake enforced exercise throughout their tightly packed days at the camp while also attending state-approved lessons.

The announcement of the summer camp initiative came less than a month after Putin headed to North Korea to meet Kim and sign a mutual military assistance pact.

The two countries have grown increasingly closer since the start of the war in Ukraine as Pyongyang became a vital supplier of military equipment and weapons.

But Putin’s visits to North Korea handed a new challenge to Pyongyang’s top ally, China, potentially allowing Kim to hedge his bets and reduce his excessive reliance on Beijing.

China so far has avoided comment on the new pact, but many experts argue that Beijing won’t like losing sway over its neighbour.

Ever since Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia has come to increasingly depend on China as the main market for its energy exports and the source of high-tech technologies in the face of Western sanctions.