Unable to attend the BRICS summit (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in Johannesburg at the end of August, or at the G20 summit in New Delhi on Sept. 9-10, due to an arrest warrant from the International Court of Justice in connection with Russian abuses in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin had to make do with a tête-à-tête with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Russia’s eastern borders on Wednesday.
For want of a better expression, the master of Moscow has turned to a country that can be summed up as an arsenal housed in a barracks itself governed by a dictatorship. You take your summit where you can get it.
Putin, who has become a pariah in at least one section of the world, spoke with the man who has enjoyed this unenviable status since he came to power over a decade ago, due to his aggressiveness in the field of nuclear weapons.
Their common ground is impressive. North Korea was one of the very few countries to blindly support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, including through its votes at the United Nations. The country, engulfed in a state of virtual autonomy, requires food aid and foreign currency, as much as technological advice, with an obvious military purpose.
BUT THIS MUTUALLY beneficial friendship sounds like an admission of weakness from Putin, and even more so in terms of his country’s arms industry, if the meeting results, as is likely, in ammunition transfers.
No one doubts the reality of North Korean stockpiles, nor their compatibility with Russian equipment.
Because of the international sanctions against Pyongyang, the reliability of these munitions is more questionable. The bombardment of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in 2010 was marked by a high failure rate for North Korean shells.
Nuclear proliferation
But there was a deeper meaning to the two men’s meeting that should not be downplayed. It demonstrated the reality of a violently anti-Western axis that appeals far beyond the handful of states that have cast votes in Moscow’s favor in UN bodies. Moscow’s neutralization of the Ukrainian issue in the final communiqué of the G20 summit is striking proof of this.
In so doing, Putin has added irresponsibility to the list of poor strategic Russian calculations that the aggression on Ukraine has exposed, from the idea of the presumed non-existence of Ukraine as a nation to the predicted spinelessness of Westerners allegedly consumed by decadence.
Putin’s visit to Iran in July 2022, in the midst of the relaunch of an equally worrying nuclear program, had already represented a foray by Moscow beyond the international consensus it has long shared against proliferation.
It was true that Russia has a crucial need for the Iranian military drones that strike Ukraine on an almost daily basis.
The normalization reflected in the Sept. 13 meeting with Kim sounded a new alarm.
This was all the more true as it came after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s visit to a military exhibition in Pyongyang at the end of July, which featured nuclear weapons and implicitly legitimized North Korea’s military adventurism.
The fight against nuclear proliferation appeared to be a potential collateral victim of the fragmentation of the world accentuated by the war in Ukraine. If this threat is confirmed, Putin’s Russia will be held accountable.
