The situation is dire when you’re boasting of closer ties with North Korea, but Vladimir Putin in 2023 finds himself in just that situation with nothing left to lose.
The Russian fanfare before the summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has rivalled the anticipation for his meetings with western leaders, where he would attempt to woo or spar with opponents such as Barack Obama or Angela Merkel.
Now, with Russia isolated internationally after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin has embraced his role as the spoiler, courting a number of anti-western African leaders at a recent summit and threatening to cross an even more serious line with North Korea, potentially violating UN sanctions that Russia itself voted for, by striking a major arms deal.
Kremlin propagandists have portrayed it as a masterstroke of diplomacy. “These are two, I’d say, creators, artists!” said Yury Tavrovsky of the Russian University of Peoples’ Friendship during a recent television broadcast dedicated to the summit. “Together they are now going to paint a new landscape of relations in the far east.”
That may be a bit too much in a region dominated by Chinese interests and where one of the partners, North Korea, is looking for humanitarian aid from Russia to alleviate food shortages.
But there is an obvious logic to the Kremlin courting North Korea. It has ammunition that Russia needs to continue its war with Ukraine, where the Kremlin has had to ration its use of shells and rockets. And North Korea could play an important role in a coalition of countries still willing to do business with Russia.
“I doubt North Korea by itself can do so – we’re talking millions of shells – but along with their imports from Iran, Moscow will try to scrounge together what it can while ramping up production at home,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Russia also stands to profit from North Korea’s provision of cheap labour, which plays a role in the Russian logging industry and has also supported some of Russia’s main prestige projects, such as the 2018 World Cup. Kim, for his part, is eyeing Russian military technology including spy satellites and nuclear submarine expertise, along with the food aid that North Korea sorely needs.
Russia is less concerned about the ramifications than ever in the past. While it was a signatory to the sanctions that prevent North Korea from conducting arms deals, it could now cancel those, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said this week.
“Why shouldn’t we go back to the USSR model and be friends with North Korea?” asked Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Moscow political analyst in international relations, in an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets paper.
“The west has already thought up everything it could [to punish us],” the paper wrote. “And both we and the North Koreans have nothing left to lose.”
