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Kim Jong Un is to have talks with Vladimir Putin in what will be the first meeting between the two leaders.

The announcement came on the same day North Korea said it did not want to deal anymore with US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and called for him to be replaced in denuclearisation discussions by someone "more mature".

And it followed the news that the North had test-fired a new tactical guided weapon in what was the first launch since a summit with US President Donald Trump ended without an agreement in Vietnam in February.

While short on details of the upcoming meeting, the Kremlin announced on its website that Mr Kim, the head of the secretive state, will visit Russia in the second half of this month.

State media in North Korea claimed the weapon had "a powerful warhead", but did not say whether it was a missile. However the word "tactical" implied a short-range weapon, and not the long-range ballistic missiles that have been seen as a threat to the US.

The first meeting between Mr Kim and Mr Trump in Singapore last June resulted in a vague agreement that saw Mr Kim commit to making the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free, but produced little in way of concrete steps.

The second meeting in Vietnam earlier this year, during which Mr Trump said the US shared "a very special relationship" with North Korea, saw talks break down over conflicting demands by North Korea for sanctions relief and by the US for North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme.

After the failure of the Vietnam summit, there has been little to no communication between America and North Korea, and Thursday’s launch could be an attempt to show the North's disapproval with how the talks are deadlocked without causing them to collapse.

Last week, Mr Kim gave the US until the end of the year to come up with a more mutually acceptable negotiation strategy.

Although Moscow did not spell out the date or venue of the Putin-Kim meeting, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper cited a diplomatic source as saying the meeting between Russian leader and Mr Kim would likely take place next week in Russia's far eastern city of Vladivostok before Mr Putin leaves for a China summit later this month.

The North Korea leader’s late father, Kim Jong Il, visited Russia in 2011. The ties between North Korea and Russia (and formerly with Soviet Union) have been historically deep.

Moscow has been saying for months that it was working on a meeting between Mr Kim and the Russian leader.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have floated the possibility of a third summit. But Mr Kim's planned meeting with Mr Putin could be seen as another snub for Mr Trump’s diplomatic efforts in North Korea.

Hours after the launch of the guided weapon, North Korea officials demanded that Washington replace Mr Pompeo in nuclear negotiations.

"The Hanoi summit gives us a lesson that whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in, the talks go wrong without any results even from the point close to success," Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the American desk at the North's foreign ministry, was quoted as saying.

"I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but (some) other person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us."

There has been no immediate reaction from Mr Trump or Mr Pompeo to Mr Kwon’s remarks.

Pyongyang accused the US of a "gangster-like mindset" during the high-level negotiations involving Pompeo last July.