Russian President Vladimir V. Putin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday, his first visit to the country in nearly a quarter-century, and the two dictators Protesters have vowed to build a united front against the United States, and Washington is concerned that deepening bilateral ties will include more arms trade.
Mr Putin, the first major head of state to visit North Korea since the pandemic, stressed the country’s importance to Russia: it is one of the few like-minded countries capable and willing to provide Moscow with the conventional weapons it desperately needs for its war effort in Ukraine.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kim Jong Un welcomed Putin with a red carpet in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The energy-starved government filled downtown Pyongyang with bright lights as the two leaders traveled to the state guesthouse in the same car – a Russian-made Aurus limousine that Putin gave to Kim last year.
Putin’s war in Ukraine has brought the two leaders closer than ever. They are expected to spend much of Wednesday in talks before Putin travels to Vietnam, according to Russian state media.
Putin has received artillery shells and missiles from North Korea to fuel his protracted war in Ukraine, and he is widely expected to seek more weapons during the trip. Kim, for his part, is eager for Russia to help ease the country’s oil shortages, improve its weapons systems and thwart Washington’s attempts to strangle its economy through international sanctions.
Putin’s alliance with Kim has alarmed Washington and its allies, particularly South Korea, because it could undermine their efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. It also poses a threat to global efforts to promote nuclear weapons non-proliferation. Moscow once joined the United States in imposing United Nations sanctions on countries such as North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programmes, but those days appear to be over.
“I don’t think he will sign this deal again,” Michael A. McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia and director of the Freeman Spoli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, said of Trump’s Ding Shi said. “I think he has decided that we are the enemy and that the liberal international order that the United States supports is over and he wants to see it destroyed.”
Weeks before Putin’s trip, Moscow used its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to disband a U.N. panel of experts that helped enforce sanctions aimed at making it harder for North Korea to develop a nuclear arsenal.
In an op-ed published in the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s main official newspaper, on the eve of his arrival, Putin denounced the United States’ “global neocolonial dictatorship” and praised Kim Jong Un for resisting “U.S. economic pressure, provocations.” “
North Korea’s economy has been battered by sanctions and Kim is determined to capitalize on his partnership with Putin. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday called the deepening ties between the two leaders “an engine that accelerates the construction of a new multipolar world.” Lu Dong said the two countries were “in the same trench” in the fight against Washington and its allies.
Putin’s visit to North Korea “shows that our security is not regional. It is global,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a joint news conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Tuesday. indicated above.
“What happens in Europe matters to Asia, and what happens in Asia matters to us,” Mr Stoltenberg said. “This is clearly demonstrated in Ukraine, where Iran, North Korea and China are providing support and fueling Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine.”
Analysts are closely watching how much and what type of military and economic support Kim Jong Un might receive from Putin.
“He’s not going to give away everything that Putin wants for nothing, and I’m worried that this will be the beginning of military aid that will lead to the modernization of North Korean weapons systems, such as launch vehicles for nuclear weapons,” Mr. McFaul said. “I fear all bets may be off now and this is an area where Russia has real capabilities to make the North Korean military-industrial complex even more powerful.”
North Korea’s military has long been derided for its outdated technology and vast stockpile of outdated Soviet-era weapons, including artillery shells. But the fact that Putin is visiting Pyongyang for the first time since 2000 shows that this old munition is the weapon Russia most urgently needs in its war of attrition in Ukraine.
