The quid pro quo will be expensive, controversial, and a clear breach of international law. At a meeting later this month, likely to be in the Russian city of Vladivostock, president Vladimir Putin will ask North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un for artillery shells and antitank missiles to stock his depleted armoury.
In return, on what will be his first foreign trip since 2019, the North Korean leader wants Russian help to build its next generation of defence assets – advanced technology for satellites and nuclear-powered submarines. North Korea made two failed attempts this year to launch a spy satellite into space. And he will want food and hard currency for his starving people.
This time Kim holds the whip hand in negotiations and will extract a high price. Russia’s costly 18-month war in Ukraine is depleting its ammunition stocks and its capacity to replenish them. It is also desperate to build international support for its Ukraine campaign, no matter how obnoxious the source, and no matter what UN embargo resolutions it flouts in the process.
The link-up – renewing a long history of defence co-operation between the two pariah states – reflects not strength but material and strategic weakness and international isolation on both sides. And the US has warned that Pyonyang would pay dearly for facilitating Russia’s war. “Providing weapons to Russia... to try to conquer territory that belongs to another sovereign nation, this is not going to reflect well on North Korea and they will pay a price for this in the international community,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.
North Korea says that it has not provided arms to Russia, although intelligence sources say it did supply them to the Wagner Group in Ukraine. Russia is in denial about potential arms purchases, hinting only that it may invite North Korea to join with it and China in naval exercises.
The prospect of such a trade, however, would mark a significant and dangerous escalation of Russia’s war efforts and a further undermining of the agreed international isolation of North Korea.