Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un have only met face to face once. It was near the North Korean border, in the Russian city of Vladivostok. Kim, dressed in a trench coat and black hat, crossed in an armored train. His Russian colleague greeted him with a handshake on the Far Eastern Federal University campus. The meeting was in April 2019, a couple of months after the failed summit in Hanoi between Kim and Donald Trump. Since then, the leaders of Moscow and Pyongyang have exchanged letters and continued flattery. But they have not seen each other again in person. That could change this September.
Vladivostok will bring Putin and Kim together again. This is what The New York Times revealed on Monday. The appointment could be early next week on the university campus where an economic forum is being held. There, the Russian would try to convince his North Korean counterpart to sell him artillery ammunition for his war in the Ukraine.
The United States has been warning all year that North Korea is willing to send weapons to Russia, if not already doing so indirectly. White House national security spokesman John Kirby claimed a few months ago that Pyongyang was covertly funneling artillery shells to help Russia in its invasion, specifically delivering artillery to the Wagner group. The North Korean regime denied this, as it did last year when Washington warned that Moscow was buying “millions of rockets and artillery shells” from it.
Kim’s support for the Russian invasion is being absolute. “The Russian people achieved great success in carrying out the just cause of protecting their dignity and the security of their country, overcoming all kinds of difficulties and problems. The Korean people express their full support and approval,” Kim Jong-wrote. a to Putin in one of his letters.
Just after Putin moved his troops into Ukraine, North Korea was one of four countries – along with Eritrea, Belarus and Syria – to oppose a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the attack. Later, Moscow returned the favor by exercising its veto power over new UN Security Council sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear program.
Last July, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang. Since the Kremlin does not have plenty of international allies, he tries to coddle more and more the relationship with the hermit Asian neighbor. Shoigu, accompanied by Kim and his North Korean counterpart, Kang Sun-nam, walked through a large arms exhibition displaying new designs for combat drones and nuclear-capable missiles. “Our country fully supports Russia’s battle for justice to protect its sovereignty. The armies of the two countries are in the same trenches in their anti-imperialist struggle,” Kang said that day.
When the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the early days of the Cold War under Kim Il-sung, the current Kim’s grandfather, Moscow was the main benefactor of Pyongyang, which had been dependent on Soviet aid for decades. But after the fall of the USSR, which hit communist Korea with a great famine, China, in full economic turmoil, filled the void.
Beijing is currently North Korea’s largest trading partner by far, although the world’s second-largest power, especially behind closed doors, has always kept a certain distance from a neighbor it considers uncomfortable and unpredictable.
Now, after three years without vital supplies entering the country due to the total isolation of the pandemic, the Kim regime is gradually beginning to open its doors to a few commercial planes that left for China and Russia in August. Pyongyang is hungry. It is unable to produce food for its 26 million inhabitants. For this reason there is a mutual interest in closer relations with Moscow.
The war in Ukraine has forced the Kremlin to desperately search for more weapons, especially ammunition that is running out so fast. Meanwhile, North Korea urgently needs food staples and foreign currency to continue financing the development of the intercontinental ballistic missiles with which it threatens the United States and neighboring South Korea.
On Monday, following reports of the Putin-Kim meeting, the US National Security Council warned that arms negotiations between the two countries have been “actively advancing” after Shoigu’s visit to Pyongyang. “We have information that Kim Jong-un expects these discussions to continue,” he noted.
North Korea seems to be starting to become an important piece in an alliance against the West that Russia has been looking for for a long time and that also includes China. The Asian giant is at odds with the United States on multiple commercial and geopolitical fronts. Instead, unlike Pyongyang, Beijing has been selling a neutral role in the war in Ukraine for 18 months, without ever officially endorsing the attack by the Russian army.
