Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un His first visit This is the first time that North and South Korea have imposed military sanctions on the United States in nearly 25 years, and the leaders of the two countries have vowed to build a united front against the United States and deepen bilateral ties, which Washington fears will lead to more arms trade.
Putin is the first major head of state to visit North Korea since the outbreak of the pandemic, highlighting the country’s importance to Russia: It is one of the few like-minded countries able and willing to provide Moscow with the conventional weapons it desperately needs for the war in Ukraine.
Kim Jong-un gave Putin a grand welcome in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on Wednesday morning. The energy-starved government kept downtown Pyongyang ablaze with lights as the two leaders rode to the state guesthouse in the same car: a Russian-made Aurus limousine that Putin gave Kim Jong-un last year.
Putin’s war in Ukraine has brought the two leaders closer than ever. The two were expected to hold talks for much of Wednesday, after which Putin will travel 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 is widely expected to seek more such assistance during his visit. Kim is eager for Russian help to ease the country’s oil shortages, improve its weapons systems and undermine Washington’s attempts to strangle its economy through international sanctions.
Putin’s alliance with Kim Jong-un worries Washington and its allies, especially South Korea, because it threatens to undermine their efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. It also poses a threat to global efforts to promote the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Moscow once joined the United States in imposing sanctions at the United Nations on countries such as North Korea and Iran because of their nuclear programs, but those days seem to be gone.
“I don’t think he’s going to agree to this kind of deal anymore,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, said of Putin. “I think he’s decided that we are the enemy, that the liberal international order that the United States has supported is over, and he wants to see it destroyed.”
Putin’s visit to North Korea comes weeks after Moscow used its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to disband a U.N. panel of experts that had helped enforce sanctions aimed at making it harder for North Korea to develop a nuclear arsenal.
On the eve of his arrival in North Korea, Putin published a column in the North’s main official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, condemning the United States for “practicing neo-colonial dictatorship on a global scale” and praising Kim Jong-un for resisting “US economic pressure, provocation, blackmail and military threats.”
Sanctions have wreaked havoc on North Korea’s economy, and Kim Jong Un is interested in leveraging his partnership with Putin. North Korea’s official KCNA news agency on Wednesday called the deepening relationship between the two leaders “an engine that accelerates the creation of a new multipolar world.” The Rodong newspaper said the two countries were “in the same boat” in their fight against Washington and its allies.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Washington on Tuesday that Putin’s visit to North Korea “demonstrates that our security is not regional but global.” At a joint press conference Meeting with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
Stoltenberg said: “What happens in Europe is important to Asia, and what happens in Asia is also important to us. Ukraine is a clear example, where Iran, North Korea and China are all putting pressure on Ukraine and fueling Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Analysts are closely watching how much and what types of military and economic support Kim Jong-un can get from Putin.
“He’s not going to give away what Putin wants for nothing, and I’m concerned that this will be the beginning of military assistance that will lead to the modernization of North Korean weapons systems, like nuclear weapons launchers,” McFaul said. “I’m concerned that now all bets may be off, and this is an area where Russia has real capabilities that can make North Korea’s military-industrial complex even more powerful.”
The North Korean military has long been derided for its technological backwardness and large stockpile of obsolete Soviet-era weaponry, such as artillery shells. But the fact that Putin was visiting Pyongyang for the first time since 2000 suggests that these old-fashioned munitions are among Russia’s most needed weapons in its war of attrition in Ukraine.
