Putin and Kim forged closer ties as a result of the old Stalinist alliance

The Second Round of the Strategic Partnership Agreement between the United States and Russia after the Russia-Ukraine War: Putin’s Outburst of the Cold War

Their upcoming meeting, the second in nine months, is a sign of the two countries’ deepening political and military partnership built over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In the past year, the two increasingly isolated countries have engaged in a flurry of bilateral diplomatic and cultural exchanges, including visits by North Korea’s foreign minister and Russia’s defense minister. In the same period, Kim Jong Un made frequent appearances at weapons factories and test sites.

North Korea previously had an alliance treaty with the Soviet Union that stipulated automatic involvement in case of an attack on either of the countries. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it was succeeded in 2000 by a lower-level treaty with Russia.

Shin Won-sik said in a recent interview that North Korea may have shipped up to five million shells and dozens of missiles to Russia.

Russia is paying for military supplies with fuel and food, and it is never known for being altruistic. Kim is clearly interested in Russia’s space and missile technologies. In his all-out embrace of his new “comrade” (as Putin now calls Kim), Putin may well oblige.

He pledged the two countries will “develop alternative trade and mutual settlement mechanisms not controlled by the West” and “build an equal and indivisible security architecture in Eurasia” while increasing people-to-people exchanges.

The comprehensive strategic partnership treaty was signed by Putin and Kim.

Russia and South Korea had expanding economic ties. Seoul became a major investor in Russia’s economy, and trade between the two countries surged to over $28 billion by 2014.

Jenny Town is the Director of the Korea Program at the Stimson Center, which is a foreign affairs think tank in Washington, D.C.

Not only is North Korea under a lot of sanctions, but the country stresses self-reliance and is less dependent on other countries.

“Russia is willing to be bold, is trying to upend the system,” she says, “whereas China is still trying to be part of that system and trying to have some governance role in that system.”

On Tuesday, China held high level talks with South Korea just hours before Putin’s arrival in North Korea. And the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea held a trilateral summit last month for the first time in over four years.

China talks aboutdenuclearization, while the Russians seem to have accepted North Korea as a country that’s nuclear armed, says Town.

Town predicts that bringing North Korea back to denuclearization negotiations will be very difficult for the U.S. and its allies.

Putin’s Cold War bid for global power revisited: From the U.S. to China, from Moscow’s consumerist opulence to Russia’s socialist utopia

The Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs has a distinguished professor in the form of Sergey Rusanenko. He’s based in Bologna, Italy. He published his book, To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War bid for Global Power, on Cambridge University Press in May.

Sure, it is not quite there yet, and Moscow’s consumerist opulence contrasts starkly with the grim deprivation of Kim’s socialist utopia. The tendencies of gradual convergence are still observable. North Korea and Russia are both in aggressive pursuit of each other.

It didn’t go well. The North Korean invasion of the South or, as Putin now conveniently calls it, Pyongyang’s “patriotic war of liberation,” triggered U.S. involvement and ultimately China’s intervention, too. It was the Chinese that managed to push the advancing U.S. and United Nations troops back to the 38th parallel. The two nations are technically still at war even though the fighting ended in 1953.

The purge of the Workers’ Party of Korea was launched by Kim when he suspected his adversaries of being pro- Chinese and pro-Russian. Kim got away with his purge and embraced what Pyongyang called juche (a form of self-reliance). It was never actual self-reliance, of course, certainly not in economic terms. The North Koreans depended on their two main supporters, China and the USSR, for aid.

The soviets were worried that the soviet Union would be blamed for the shoot down of the American plane by the North Koreans. When the relationship began to fracture in the late 1980s, only the hard-line Stalinists shed any tears. Russia looked to South Korea.

The invasion of Ukranian by Russia in February of 2022 changed the game in Korea. South Korean sanctions caused a plunge in bilateral trade with Russia. In July of 2023, the President of Korea visited Kyiv in a show of support for the Ukrainian President.

More than thirty years ago, the Foreign Minister accused Shevardnidze of abandoning North Korea like a pair of worn-out shoes. Putin pulled out these old, blood-stained shoes from the garbage bin and put them back on. He likes the look of it.

SEOUL, South Korea — Russia and North Korea signed a new treaty that provides mutual defense assistance, formalizing the two countries’ heightened level of military and diplomatic cooperation.

In his press conference Putin said that the agreement includes the provision of mutual assistance in case of an aggression against one of the signatories.

The full scope of the treaty and other agreements signed on Wednesday are not publicized. Some North Korea watchers question the future of the bilateral ties.

But the United States and its allies have raised concerns that a growing military partnership would embolden the two ostracized countries and destabilize the region and beyond.

In Washington on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said after his meeting with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that Russia’s war is “propped up” by countries like North Korea and China. He said, “If they succeed inUkraine, it will make us vulnerable and the world more dangerous.”

Vladimir Putin meets Vladimir Putin in the Kumsusan State Guesthouse: a cross-border view on the UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea

After hugs and a brief chat, the two rode in a Russian-made Aurus sedan together to the Kumsusan State Guesthouse along the capital’s streets, which flew Russian national flags and welcoming banners.

The welcoming ceremony in North Korea on Wednesday was attended by many military and honor guards, along with North Korean citizens waving flowers and flags.

In the press conference later, Putin criticized the U.S.’ “confrontational policy” in the region and defended North Korea against attempts to place the blame for destabilization of the international situation on his host. He wants the UN Security Council to take a closer look at the sanctions against North Korea.

He said “full support and solidarity with the Russian government, army and people in carrying out the special military operation in Ukraine”, according to Sputnik.