Ukraine recap: Kim Jong-un visits Putin for arms-for-tech talks while Kyiv urges west for longer-range missiles to aid counteroffensive

By Jonathan Este, The Conversation

Vladimir Putin spent a few pleasant hours this week with one of his friends and allies – an increasingly exclusive club these days. Putin met up with North Korea’s supreme leader, Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un, who rode his armoured train 20 hours to the Vostochny space centre in the remote Amur region in to talk weapons programmes with the Russian president.

Kim confirmed that Putin had his full support for Russia’s “sacred fight” against the west: “We will always stand with Russia on the anti-imperialist front”, he said as the pair posed for a joint statement after a trip to the cosmodome and a two-hour meeting. Details of what the pair spoke about have not been disclosed but issues are thought to have included North Korea supplying Russia with arms and ammunition in return for advanced satellite and nuclear-powered submarine technology.

As Daniel Salisbury, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London, has pointed out, it’s no secret that the two countries have been engaged in weapons transfers for some time. There is evidence of arms deals going back several years. And when Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu was in Pyongyang recently, he was taken to an arms fair to look at the latest North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range hypersonic missiles and advanced drones.

Salisbury is concerned that any sanctions-busting deal between the two countries could not only help Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine, but could significantly boost North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction programme. Neither of these outcomes would be beneficial to international security.

Ukraine is also urging its allies to step up supplies of weapons and according to reports from Washington the US president, Joe Biden, is close to reversing his stance on providing Kyiv with the long-range missiles systems it has been begging for.

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