North Korea’s Kim Jong Un vowed “full and unconditional support” for Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Wednesday as the two leaders held a summit at Russia’s spaceport in the Far East. The meeting, which lasted over four hours, has raised concerns, as the U.S. warns it could lead to a deal to supply ammunition for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The meeting underscores how the interests of North Korea and Russia are aligning. Putin is believed to be seeking one of the few things impoverished North Korea has in abundance: stockpiles of aging ammunition and rockets for Soviet-era weapons. Such a request would mark a reversal of roles from the 1950-53 Korean War, when Moscow gave weapons to support Pyongyang’s invasion of South Korea and in the decades of Soviet sponsorship of the North that followed.
The decision to meet at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s most important launch center on its own soil, suggests Kim is seeking Russian help in developing military reconnaissance satellites, which he has described as crucial to enhancing the threat of his nuclear-capable missiles. In recent months, North Korea has repeatedly failed to put its first military spy satellite into orbit.
During the summit, Putin met Kim’s limousine, brought from Pyongyang in the North Korean leader’s special armored train, at the entrance to the launch facility, greeting his guest with a handshake that lasted about 40 seconds. In opening remarks, Putin talked about the Soviet Union’s wartime support for North Korea and said the talks would cover economic cooperation, humanitarian issues, and the “situation in the region.”
Kim, in turn, pledged continued support for Moscow, making an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine.
“Russia is currently engaged in a just fight against hegemonic forces to defend its sovereign rights, security, and interests,” he said. “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has always expressed its full and unconditional support for all measures taken by the Russian government, and I take this opportunity to reaffirm that we will always stand with Russia on the anti-imperialist front and the front of independence.”
North Korea may have tens of millions of aging artillery shells and rockets based on Soviet designs that could give a huge boost to the Russian army in Ukraine, analysts say.
The United States has accused North Korea of providing Russia with arms, including selling artillery shells to the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Both Russian and North Korean officials have denied such claims.
However, either buying arms from or providing rocket technology to North Korea would violate international sanctions that Russia has supported in the past. Such a move would both underscore and deepen Russia’s isolation in the more than 18 months after its invasion of Ukraine drew increasing sanctions that have cut off Moscow’s economy from global markets and shrunk the circle of world leaders willing to meet with Putin.
Wednesday’s summit came three weeks after a suspicious plane crash killed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in June launched a brief rebellion that challenged Putin. The Kremlin denied it was behind the crash.
As the leaders toured a Soyuz-2 space rocket launch facility, Kim peppered a Russian space official with questions about the rockets.
Kim and Putin met together with their delegations and later one-on-one. After the talks, the Russian president gave an official lunch for Kim. Russia is providing humanitarian aid to North Korea, and Putin mentioned that the two countries have “lots of interesting projects” in spheres like transportation and agriculture.
However, Putin dodged the issue of their military cooperation, saying only that Russia is abiding by the sanctions prohibiting procurement of weapons from Pyongyang. Ambassador James O’Brien, head of the Office of Sanctions Coordination at the U.S. State Department, said that Russia was “scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for help because it’s having trouble sustaining its military.”
Wednesday’s meeting came hours after North Korea fired two ballistic missiles toward the sea, extending a highly provocative run in testing since 2022, as Kim used the distraction caused by war in Ukraine to accelerate his weapons development.
Despite the recent frequency of North Korean missile firings, Wednesday’s launches on the eve of the summit came as a surprise. South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said it was the first time North Korea launched a missile while Kim was traveling overseas.
Kim could have ordered the launches to make a point to Putin about North Korea’s defense posture and show that he remains in close control of the country’s military activities even while abroad, said Moon Seong Mook, an analyst with the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.
Moon, a retired South Korean brigadier general who participated in past inter-Korean military talks, said North Korea with the launches could have also intended to express its anger toward the United States, after State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a press briefing that Putin was meeting “an international pariah to ask for assistance in a war.”
Speculation about military cooperation grew after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea in July. Kim subsequently toured his weapons factories, which experts said had the dual goal of encouraging the modernization of North Korean weaponry and examining artillery and other supplies that could be exported to Russia.
At their lunch, Kim said he and Putin agreed to deepen their “strategic and tactical cooperation,” and that he believes Russia will achieve victory, an apparent reference to Ukraine. “We believe with certainty that the Russian army and people will achieve a great victory in the just fight to punish the evil forces pursuing hegemonic and expansionary ambitions and create a stable environment for national development,” Kim said.