September 13, 2022 - 3:15pm
War makes for unusual bedfellows. While Ukraine enjoys the backing of the world’s richest military and most of the European continent, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has had to cast his net further afield.
Last week declassified US intelligence revealed Russia is purchasing “millions of artillery shells and rockets” from North Korea, with plans to buy more. It comes on the heels of North Korea’s National Liberation Day last month, in which leader Kim Jong-Un promised to strengthen their “comradely friendship” and Putin vowed to expand “comprehensive and constructive bilateral relations”.
The deepening ties between the two nations should not be taken as a sign of Russia’s growing influence — or strength — in the Asiatic world. Indeed, “Russia’s purchases of rockets and shells is an act of desperation and necessity for the ruling government,” says Dr Edward Howell, Lecturer in Politics at Oxford University and specialist in North Korean foreign policy “rather than any sort of actual rapprochement with North Korea”.
As the Ukraine war enters the seventh month of what was intended as a 72-hour operation, Russian military stocks are depleted and allies are similarly lacking. With export controls beginning to bite, semiconductors, microchips, transistors and other high-tech materials are, according to Ukrainian intelligence, the most in-demand items on Russia’s shopping list.
Such is the Russian army’s dearth of supplies that abandoned military equipment has been found containing semiconductors taken from dishwashers and refrigerators. Thus, North Korea is likely to be a useful supplier for Russia thanks to years spent building criminal networks capable of evading sanctions and smuggling in banned goods.
North Korea has also been one of the few nations willing to lend its voice in support of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, having recognised the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, opposed a March UN General Assembly resolution condemning the invasion, and attributed the conflict to US “hegemonic policy”. For Putin, ostentatiously strengthening ties forms a visible riposte to North Korea’s regional adversaries Japan and South Korea, both of whom have condemned the invasion, given Ukraine aid, and joined in sanctions against Russia.
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Subscribe…..Bringing in North Korean workers….What a good idea – especially if they are military trained. As far as having the right to make a pre-emptive nuclear strike – I think the Chinese might think differently given that some NK ICBMs will cross the Chinese mainland and some (US) counter strikes would put fallout ON chinese soil.
Russia is probably strengthening ties with North Korea because the US told Europe to cut all ties to Russia, started a war in Ukraine in 2014 to ensure that sooner or later they would; and Russia made a fateful strategic decision to turn East, not West.
Russia is helping China and others to build the SCO, the BRICS, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Eurasian Economic forum and much more.
Just because we told Russia to get stuffed and never come back doesn’t mean Russia has to become a hermit.