By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

What Putin And Kim Want From Each Other

After more than three years of intense, self-imposed isolationism amid the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ventured outside his country’s borders this week. Kim headed for the Russian Far East—on the same armored train once favored by his father—to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was Kim’s first meeting with a foreign leader since 2019. Playing host allowed the Russian president to project an image of relative diplomatic normality amid his diplomatic isolation, crystallized by his absences from the recent G-20 and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summits.

Putin greeted Kim informally in Russian, familiarizing himself with the North Korean leader he first met in 2019. Kim, for his part, professed his country’s fealty to Moscow’s “sacred struggle” against Ukraine. While both aimed to project solidarity against a global order dominated by the West, their strategic convergence stems from a more transactional logic spurred on by difficult circumstances for both leaders. Simply put, each man has much to offer the other.

Kim and Putin have held their cards close to their chests about what they’ve sought from each other. Unlike typical leader-level summitry, the two chose not to issue any joint statement hinting at what they may have discussed or agreed to. However, the optics of their meeting and other recent high-level diplomatic engagements between the two countries were much more overt.

In the lead-up to Kim’s trip, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, flanked by other senior defense officials involved in the procurement of weaponry, toured an exhibition hall in Pyongyang plush with North Korean weaponry. The fact that North Korea remains under a comprehensive United Nations Security Council-backed arms embargo that Russia has long supported seems not to be much of a hindrance.

The choice of venue for the Kim-Putin summit was equally unsubtle. The two leaders met at Russia’s relatively new Vostochny Cosmodrome, an eastern spaceport designed to reduce Moscow’s reliance on Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. Putin said the decision to meet there was an acknowledgment of Kim’s “great interest in rocket technology,” noting the North Korean leader’s push to “develop space … that’s why we came to Vostochny Cosmodrome,” Russian state media reported. Indeed, North Korea is trying to develop a mature space program, but as its two failed satellite launch attempts this year indicate, it has room to grow. Russian assistance with space launch technology could advance Pyongyang’s military modernization ambitions, including developing military reconnaissance satellites.

But Pyongyang seeks other perks from its full-throated support of Russian interests. Following his meeting with Putin, Kim’s train carried on toward Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where he visited a factory producing Su-35 and Su-57 fighter jets—systems far more advanced than the obsolete airframes currently available to the Korean People’s Air Force. Even short of procuring new fighters, North Korea could benefit from a steady supply of spare parts and components to shore up its existing fleet of Soviet-origin military aircraft, significantly improving their airworthiness and reliability.

Kim will also likely seek access to raw and composite materials from Russian suppliers that could supercharge his indigenous missile programs. North Korea has long relied on organized criminal networks to source materials such as Kevlar and aramid fibers from Russia for use in its advanced missiles. Active Russian facilitation of such transfers—while a violation of United Nations sanctions—would assist in fulfilling Pyongyang’s military ambitions. North Korea could also seek covert technical assistance. Putin’s contempt for international rules and norms may make forms of technical cooperation that were previously unthinkable between the two countries increasingly feasible.

Beyond hardware, Kim likely approached Putin about the prospect of food aid, which could address severe nutritional challenges that have intensified in North Korea through the pandemic. Such assistance would not violate sanctions but help Kim address food shortages that he has openly acknowledged in recent years, even as he has continued to spend lavishly on nuclear modernization. Separated by only their own land border and territorial waters, North Korea and Russia can easily conduct large-scale transfers.

Russia can also offer its diplomatic support for North Korean goals. Pyongyang has benefited considerably from Russian—and Chinese—shelter at the United Nations Security Council. Since the collapse of the last round of U.S.-North Korea diplomacy in 2019, both Beijing and Moscow have been unequivocal in their rejection of any new sanctions or even formal censure at the United Nations—a far cry from their acquiescence to comprehensive, sectoral sanctions in 2016 and 2017. Last year, neither state was willing to support a presidential statement condemning Pyongyang’s testing of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, Moscow’s interest in the latest meeting likely lies in North Korea’s substantial inventory of artillery shells and rocket artillery munitions that are reverse-compatible with Soviet-era launchers used by Russian armed forces. U.S. intelligence sources, cited by the New York Times last September, suggested such transfers had already occurred, but this was likely premature. Instead, the recent spate of bilateral diplomacy between North Korea and Russia appears to have been designed to facilitate such a transfer, which a White House spokesperson said was “actively advancing” after Shoigu’s visit.

Despite their attempts to project a shared ideological front at the summit, Putin and Kim may not be willing to yield to the other’s demands fully—at least, not yet. North Korea, for instance, may seek access to sensitive Russian naval nuclear propulsion technology, which Moscow is unlikely to part with for little in return. Similarly, Russia may seek to acquire more advanced North Korean missiles for possible use in Ukraine, but Kim may prefer to keep these for his own national defense and deterrence needs.

 

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