Russia and North Korea

@Spriter99880
Deputy of the Russian Security Council: If South Korea provides arms to Ukraine, it will see the latest Russian weapons in the hands of North Korea.

That's what I like to hear

No caption needed

Even there, note the 'briefcase man' right behind him.

In the long term, the unification of the Korean peninsula might be possible through the mediation of a joint Russian - Chinese effort. For this, a booby-trap (actually a rat-trap) is needed by a (false) dispute between Moscow & Beijing, thus implying in an incremental and thorough communication between both geopolitical centres.

Pepe Escobar: Russia, North Korea Stage 'Strategic Coup' Against Western Hegemony, 09.19.2023.

It will take ages to unpack the silos of information inbuilt in the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last week, coupled with the – armored - train-keeps-a-rollin’ conducted by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un straddling every nook and cranny of Primorsky Krai.

The key themes all reflect the four main vectors of the New Great Game as it’s being played across the Global South: energy and energy resources; manufacturing and labor; market and trade rules; and logistics. But they go way beyond – exploring the subtle nuances of the current civilizational war.

So Vladivostok presented…
- A serious debate on the surge of anti-neocolonialism, presented for instance by the Myanmar delegation; geostrategically, Burma/Myanmar, as a privileged gateway to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, was always an object of Divide and Rule games, with the British Empire only caring about extracting natural resources. This is what “scientific colonialism” is all about.
- A serious debate on the concept of the civilization-state, as already developed by Chinese and Russian scholars, applied to China, Russia, India and Iran.
- The interconnection of transport/connectivity corridors. That includes the upgrading of the Trans-Siberian in the near future; a boost for the Trans-Baikal – the world’s busiest rail line – connecting the Urals to the Far East; a renewed drive for the Northern Sea Route (last month two Russian oil tankers sailed from Murmansk across the Arctic to China for the first time; ten days shorter than the Suez Canal route); and the coming of the Chennai-Vladivostok channel, which will be connected to the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC).
- The common Eurasia payment system, discussed in detail in one of the key panels: Greater Eurasia: Drivers for the Formation of an Alternative International and Monetary and Financial System. The immense challenge to set up a new payment settlement currency against “toxic currencies” instrumentalized amid relentless Hybrid War. In another panel, the possibility of a timely BRICS and EAEU joint summit next year has been evoked.

All Aboard The Kim Train

The genesis of Kim Jong Un’s train journey to the Russian Far East - coinciding with the Forum, no less - is a masterful strategic coup that was in the works since 2014, at the time of the Maidan.

Xi Jinping was still in the beginning of his first mandate; he had announced the New Silk Road exactly ten years ago, first in Astana and then in Jakarta. The DPRK was not supposed to be integrated into this vast pan-Eurasian project that would soon become China’s overarching foreign policy concept.

The DPRK then was on a roll against the Hegemon, under Obama, and Beijing was no more than a worried spectator. Moscow, of course, was always focused on peace in the Korean Peninsula, especially because its geopolitical priorities in 2014 were Donbass and Syria/Iran. The last thing Moscow could afford was a war in Asia-Pacific.

Putin’s strategy was to send Defence Minister Shoigu to Beijing and Islamabad to calm it all down. Pakistan at the time was helping Pyongyang to weaponize their nuclear arsenal. Simultaneously, Putin himself approached Kim, offering serious guarantees: we’ve got your back if ever there is an attack by the Hegemon supported by Seoul. Even better: Putin got Xi himself to double down on the guarantees.

The categorical imperative was simple: as long as Pyongyang did not start any trouble, Moscow and Beijing would be by its side.
A sort of calm before any possible storm then set in – even if Pyongyang continued to test their missiles. So over the years, Kim’s mindset changed; he became convinced that Russia and China were his allies.
The DPRK's geoeconomic integration into Eurasia was seriously discussed in previous, pre-Covid editions of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. That included the tantalizing possibility of a Trans-Korean Railway linking both North and South to the Far East, Siberia and the wider Eurasia.

So Kim started to see the Big Eurasia Picture, and how Pyongyang could finally start to benefit geoeconomically from a closer association with the EAEU, SCO and BRI.
This is how strategic diplomacy works: you invest during a decade, and then all the pieces fall into place when an armored train keeps-a-rollin’ across Primorsky Krai.

From the perspective of a Russia-China-DPRK triangle, it’s no wonder the collective West has been reduced to the status of crying toddlers in a sandbox. The Hegemon’s puny US-Japan-South Korea axis to counter, simultaneously, China and the DPRK, is a joke compared to the DPRK’s brand-new role as a sort of Asia-Pacific Military District, adjacent to their immediate neighbor, the Russian Far East.

There will be military integration, of course, in missile defense, radars, ports, airfields. But the key vector, along the way, will be geoeconomic integration. Sanctions from now on are meaningless.

No one in 2014 was seeing this all play out, except for a very sharp analyst who coined the precious Double Helix concept to define the still evolving, at the time, Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

The Double Helix perfectly explains the full-spectrum geostrategic symbiosis between two civilization-states which happen to be former empires but since the middle of the previous decade willfully decided to accelerate their mutual drive to lead the Global Majority in the path towards multipolarity.

The Road to Polycentricity

All of the above finely coalesced in the last panel in Vladivostok - informally known even to the Japanese and Koreans as “the European capital of Asia”, in the heart of Asia-Pacific. The debate was on a “global alternative to Western dominance”. The West, incidentally, was absolutely invisible at the Forum.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova summed it all up: the recent G20 and BRICS summits had set the stage for President Putin’s remarkable address to the plenary session in Vladivostok.

Zakharova alluded to “fantastic strategic patience”. That applies to the whole “pivot to Asia” policy and boosting the development of the Far East, initiated in 2012, and now implying a full turn of the Russian economy towards Asia-Pacific geoeconomics. But at the same time, that also applies to integrating the DPRK into the geoeconomic Eurasian high-speed train.

Zakharova stressed how Russia “never supported isolation”; always “advocated partnership” – which the Forum graphically displayed for dozens of Global South delegations. And now, under the conditions of a “dirty fight, unlawful and with no rules”, a serious stand-off, the Russian position remains easily recognizable for the Global Majority: “Not to accept dictatorship”.

Andrey Denisov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, made a point to mention crack political analyst Sergey Karaganov as one of the key drivers of the concept of Greater Eurasia. More than “multipolarity”, Denisov argued, what is being built is “polycentricity”: a series of concentric circles, involving plenty of dialogue partners.

Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl now heads a new think tank in St. Petersburg, G.O.R.K.I. As a European who ended up being ostracized by her own peers under the blatant toxicity of cancel culture, she stressed how freedom and rule of law have disappeared in Europe.

Kneissl referred to the Battle of Actium as the key passage of power from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Western Mediterranean: “That’s when the dominance of the West started”, complete with all the mythology built around the Roman Empire which obsesses the Anglosphere to this day.

With sanctions dementia and irrational Russophobia installed at the head of the EU and the European Commission, Kneissl stressed, the notion that “treaties must be preserved” disappeared while “the rule of law has been destroyed. This is the worst that could have happened to Europe”.

Alexander Dugin, online, called for understanding “the depth of Western domination”, expressed via hyper-liberalism. And he proposed a key breakthrough: the Western modus operandi should become an object of research, in a sort of Gramscian attempt to define what distinguishes Western ideology, and thus act towards “deep decolonization”.

In a sense this is what is being attempted by current actors in West Africa – Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger. That poses the question of who is a real Sovereign in a new world. The West, argues Dugin, is a Total Sovereign; Russia, as a nuclear power and prime military power defined as an existential threat by the Hegemon, is also a Sovereign.

Then there’s China, India, Iran, Turkey. These are key poles in a dialogue of civilizations; actually what was proposed by former Iranian President Khatami way back in the late 1990s, and then dismissed by the Hegemon.

Dugin remarked how China “has moved far away in building a civilizational state”. Russia, Iran, India are not far behind. These will be the essential actors steering the world towards polycentricity.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230919/pepe-escobar-russia-north-korea-stage-strategic-coup-against-western-hegemony-1113489011.html

Russia’s new strategic partnership with North Korea to 'symbolize new level of ties'

Russia’s readiness to ink a strategic partnership deal (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26626) with North Korea is “a symbolic” step, Artyom Lukin, Professor of international politics at the Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, told Sputnik.

“I can suggest that most likely this will be a symbolic document, underscoring that Russia and the DPRK are friends representing a ‘united front against the West,’” he said.

Putin accepted a proposal from the Russian Foreign Ministry to sign the strategic partnership agreement with North Korea ahead of his official visit to the DPRK. (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26589)

It will “allow the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during negotiations on the signing of the said treaty, to make changes to its draft that are not of a fundamental nature," according to the relevant decree.

Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov noted that the document, “will outline the prospects for further cooperation and will be signed, taking into account what has happened between the countries in recent years in the field of international politics, in the economic sphere, and in the field of relations, including taking into account security issues.”

The new document’s provisions follow all the norms of international law and are not directed against any third country, the Kremlin underscored.

The new treaty will replace agreements previously signed by Russia and North Korea, such as the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance (1961), the Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighborliness, and Cooperation signed in 2000, and the Moscow and Pyongyang Declarations of 2000 and 2001.

The new pact will include more “anti-Western rhetoric,” Artyom Lukin noted, pointing to the collective West’s “hegemony,” while emphasizing that Russia and the DPRK “stand for a multipolar world and oppose neocolonialism.”

“I think this is a symbol that our relations with the DPRK are rising to a new level. We confirm that we do not want to participate in the regime of sanctions pressure on the DPRK,” he concluded.

https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26650

Russia’s Strategic Partnership With North Korea to 'Symbolize New Level of Ties'




Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a new draft comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with North Korea on Tuesday ahead of his two-day official visit to Pyongyang.
Russia's announced readiness to sign a strategic partnership agreement with North Korea is primarily “a symbolic” step, Artyom Lukin, professor of international politics at the Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, told Sputnik.
“I can suggest that most likely this will be a symbolic document, underscoring that Russia and the DPRK are friends representing a 'united front against the West,'” he said.

President Vladimir Putin accepted a proposal from the Russian Foreign Ministry to sign a strategic partnership agreement with North Korea ahead of his official visit to the DPRK.
It will “allow the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during negotiations on the signing of the said treaty, to make changes to its draft that are not of a fundamental nature," according to the relevant decree. Moscow and Pyongyang are set to sign the accord during Putin's visit to the DPRK on June 18-19.

Most likely, the new treaty will add on more “anti-Western rhetoric,” he noted, stipulating that the collective West “claims hegemony,” and Russia and the DPRK “stand for a multipolar world and oppose neocolonialism.”
"It will be more interesting to see what exactly President Putin and Kim Jong Un will agree on during the negotiations," he added.

Asked to shed light on the new treaty, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov noted that the document, “will outline the prospects for further cooperation and will be signed, taking into account what has happened between the countries in recent years in the field of international politics, in the economic sphere, and in the field of relations, including taking into account security issues.” He clarified that the provisions of the new document take into account all norms of international law and are not directed against any third country. The document will contribute to stability in the region, the Kremlin underscored.
The new treaty will replace agreements previously signed by Moscow and Pyongyang, such as the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance (1961), Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighborliness, and Cooperation signed in 2000, and the Moscow and Pyongyang Declarations of 2000 and 2001.

The 12-article Russia-North Korea Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness, and Cooperation laid the legal foundation for the two countries’ basic relations in 2000. Artyom Lukin pointed out that numerous analytical works have dissected the meaning behind the concept of "comprehensive strategic partnership." Russia already maintains a strategic partnership relationship with countries such as China, India, and Vietnam. But none of these literally mean they are “in the same trench,” the professor added.

“I think this is a symbol that our relations with the DPRK are rising to a new level. We confirm that we do not want to participate in the regime of sanctions pressure on the DPRK. Of course, by signing such an agreement, Russia is challenging the international sanctions regime against it," Lukin underscored.

But at the same time, we are, in effect, “signaling with this agreement and with our other actions that sanctions for us no longer exist,” the analyst concluded.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240618/russias-strategic-partnership-with-north-korea-to-symbolize-new-level-of-ties-1119009218.html

I wonder what will come out of the visit in practice

First and foremost military co-operation and military-industrial purchases. Russia is buying North Korean ammo, perhaps missiles as well.
North Korea is interested in Russian missile technology and other know-how.
South Korea has reportedly cooled on supplying the Ukraine with ammo and arms, but then they're not a sovereign country as such anyway. The Russian MFA has reported that it doesn't see signs of South Korea supplying the Ukraine now, or something to that effect. Which might mean that Russia won't be in a hurry to transfer more technology to North Korea either

Either way the sanctions on North Korea are gone and there won't be any return to them. Russia can supply the country with as much fuel as they need, as much grain and other material. And Russia can defend the country against all pressure in the UN by the US and its allies. Naturally China is on the same page as Russia as well.
But then all this stuff is already a done deal anyway and has been for a couple years now.

The remaining issue I presume will be that of labour migration, or otherwise contractual work of North Korean workers on whatever Russian projects. We haven't heard anything about that for a while, and migration is a politically sensitive issue in Russia at present.

So it's hard to come to any conclusions about what they're really up to, ol' Putin and Kim    But it must be something, else Putin wouldn't have paid a visit.

Vladimir Putin held talks with the leader of the DPRK at the Kumsusan state residence in Pyongyang. They lasted an hour and a half.

Putin's main statements :

— A new fundamental document has been prepared, which will form the basis of relations between the two states for many years to come.

— The Russian Federation appreciates the DPRK’s support for Russian policy, including in the Ukrainian direction.

— Russia is fighting against decades of imposed US imperialist policies.

— Interaction between the Russian Federation and the DPRK is based on equality and mutual respect.

— The exploits of previous generations are a good basis for the development of relations between the Russian Federation and the DPRK today.

— I hope that the next meeting will take place in Moscow.

What Kim Jong-un said :

— The government of the DPRK evaluates Russia’s role in maintaining the strategic balance in the world, and also expresses support for conducting a strategic military action in Ukraine.

— Relations between the DPRK and the Russian Federation are entering a period of new prosperity.

— We intend to strengthen strategic relations with Russia and will unconditionally support the Russian Federation.

t.me/ForeignAgentIntel

First footage of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un meeting (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26682) in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square

https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26695

President Putin Arrives to Fanfare in North Korea

Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a new comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with North Korea, Sputnik reported. Mark Sleboda, a Moscow-based international relations security analyst joined the Critical Hour on Tuesday to discuss Russia and North Korea’s recent partnership.

“Putin [arrived (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26682)] to a lot of fanfare,” said Sleboda. “Putin even penned an article in North Korea's, the DPRK's daily newspaper and his, Putin is kind of known for his measured, low key, pragmatic, calculated rhetoric, I would say, over the last two decades. This is not that Putin [who] wrote that article.”

The analyst said that Russia's decision to sign the strategic partnership agreement particularly contrasts with what many Western countries have done with Ukraine (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/16237).

“[It’s] widely assumed that what North Korea is getting out of all of their cooperation deals with Russia is Russian knowledge, Russian experience, helping with their space program, including the launch of sophisticated satellite reconnaissance,” he added.

After the visit is over, Putin will then travel to Vietnam (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26589) at the invitation of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

Go through link (https://sputnikglobe.com/20240619/1119017262.html) to learn more

Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement between Russia and DPRK implies assistance in case of aggression against one of the participants, Russia's President Vladimir Putin said.

Key statements by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un following talks in Pyongyang

Russian president:

The concluded treaty (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26736) on comprehensive partnership provides, among other things, for mutual assistance in case of aggression against one of the participants;

Russia does not rule out the possibility of military-technical cooperation with the DPRK in accordance with the signed treaty;

Both Russia and the DPRK pursue an independent foreign policy and will not accept the language of blackmail and diktat;

Moscow and Pyongyang will continue to oppose the practice of sanctions strangulation (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26747) as a tool used by the West to maintain hegemony;

The US-led UN Security Council sanctions against the DPRK should be reconsidered.

DPRK leader:

The concluded treaty between Moscow and Pyongyang is peaceful and defensive in nature and will accelerate the creation of a new multipolar world;

The new treaty between Russia and the DPRK envisages (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26749) the development of cooperation between the two countries, including in the military sphere;

Russia is the most honest friend and associate for the DPRK, and Putin is the dearest friend of the Korean people.

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Vladimir Putin got behind the wheel of the brand new Aurus (https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26730) Russian luxury car to give Kim Jong-un a ride

https://t.me/geopolitics_live/26753

North Korea sure knows how to throw a party

Russia and North Korea will build a new road bridge across the Tumannaya River. 


Now only a railway bridge exists. 


The presence of a road bridge will certainly enhance cross-border contacts between countries and provide new opportunities for trade and supplies in both directions.

https://www.ng.ru/world/2024-06-19/1_9031_friendship.html?print=Y

Undeclared aspects of the negotiations between Putin and Kim and their fatal consequences: https://youtu.be/F6tJbE7Q5lM

A guy from Kiev telling us what Putin is doing is bad...

he is an ethnic Ukrainian & a former KGB resident spy who was stationed in Washington DC & quit after USSR demise, not agreeing to what his superiors were doing; now he lives in the USA & has good connections.
I like to watch his clips to get more info. & insight of what may happen next, even while not agreeing with him.
https://asiatimes.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2049a8663daea00bd30c32cf2&id=ead6fe6c1b&e=5455568640

https://youtu.be/-c74vFtTQfA