Vladimir Putin said Russia and North Korea have ramped up ties to a “new level,” pledging to help each other if either nation is attacked in a “breakthrough” new partnership announced during the Russian president’s rare visit to the reclusive state.

Thousands of North Koreans chanting “welcome Putin” lined the city’s wide boulevards brandishing Russian and North Korean flags and bouquets of flowers, as Putin kicked off his first visit to North Korea in 24 years with a finely choreographed display of influence in the dictatorship.

The pair then signed the new strategic partnership to replace previous deals signed in 1961, 2000 and 2001, according to Russian state news agency TASS. “The comprehensive partnership agreement signed today includes, among other things, the provision of mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this agreement,” Putin said after the meeting.

  • bulwark@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Hot take, I doubt either of them would help the other out more than a symbolic gesture.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      No, they would. NK is already manufacturing weapons for Russia. And back in the Korean War, Soviet Russia provided weapons, aircraft, and pilots to North Korea. That’s more or less what would happen again, I think.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Probably the two least reliable and most devious regimes in the world. They deserve each other as allies.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
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      5 months ago

      NK’s narrative is that SK is separate from the one true Korea because it’s occupied by, or at least heavily influenced by, the US. That means that if Russia were to, say, declare war on the US - however unlikely that might be - NK would theoretically be in favour.

      Kim would almost certainly be interested in finally getting to lob a couple of bombs at an actual target.

      Less seriously(?), you could also argue that Putin’s pining for the glory days of the USSR with its empty stores and downtrodden, starving citizens fits right in with what’s going on in NK, so perhaps Kim had better watch his back lest he become the former dictator of a new SSR.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        5 months ago

        That means that if Russia were to, say, declare war on the US - however unlikely that might be - NK would theoretically be in favour.

        North Korea had a war with the US once, after they gambled incorrectly that the US would not respond to an invasion of South Korea. I doubt that Pyongyang would intentionally enter into another.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

        The bombing campaign destroyed almost every substantial building in North Korea. The war’s highest-ranking U.S. POW, U.S. Major General William F. Dean, reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland. Dean Rusk, the U.S. State Department official who headed East Asian affairs, concluded that America had bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground. In November 1950, the North Korean leadership instructed the population to build dugouts and mud huts and to dig tunnels, in order to solve the acute housing problem.

        By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea.

        In May 1951, an international fact finding team from East Germany, West Germany, China, and the Netherlands stated, “The members, in the whole course of their journey, did not see one town that had not been destroyed, and there were very few undamaged villages.”

    • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      NK has bodies, Putin needs soldiers…

      NK needs food, supplies, technical knowledge on missile construction and of course nukes.

      They can help each other plenty.

  • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Kim should check with Armenia how it works put to be in a bilateral security treaty with Russia and you get attacked.

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The fun part is Russia leads the CSTO, which is the same type of organization as NATO. However, three members have left it, including Azerbaijan Armenia just this year as Russia failed to hold up their commitment when Article 4 (equivalent to NATO’s Article 5) was called when Armenia Azerbaijan took land Russia considered Azerbaijan’s Armenia’s in late 2022.

      Edit: Flipped the names. They are now correct.

        • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Ah, crap, that I do. I should look at a map whenever I talk about them. It’s stored in my head in this fashion:

          • Russia’s buddy is in the west and gets disputed land taken by guy in the east.
          • Both countries start with ‘A’ and are near Turkey.
      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Russian equivalent of NATO

        Doesn’t actually follow their equivalent of Article 5

        Sounds about right. But tbh I don’t think Article 4 has been properly tested either.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Imagine manacling yourself to a nuclear-armed rabid Chihuahua and being like “okay, you protect me. I’ll protect you”.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Is this a back channel so China can use North Korea as a loading bay for its trade with Russia, which the US recently warned it to stop.

    So plausible deniability insurance.

  • Doom@ttrpg.network
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    5 months ago

    If you see this anything other than Russian desperation you’re a fool. Putin is afraid

    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      I just wonder what russians think about that. Are they like: well everyone hates us, but the north korean are on our side, so we’re doing preeeeetty good i’d say

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    5 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Vladimir Putin said Russia and North Korea have ramped up ties to a “new level,” pledging to help each other if either nation is attacked in a “breakthrough” new partnership announced during the Russian president’s rare visit to the reclusive state.

    Putin was met with exuberant celebrations at a welcome ceremony with his counterpart at Kim Il Sung Square in the heart of the North Korean capital, where mounted soldiers, military personnel and children holding balloons cheered against the backdrop of large portraits of the each leader.

    Putin landed in North Korea in the early hours of Wednesday local time, exactly 24 years to the day he was last in Pyongyang, for a visit heralding the countries’ deepening alignment in the face of shared animosity toward the West and international concerns over their growing military cooperation.

    In remarks ahead of talks between the two, Kim voiced his “full support and solidarity with the struggles of the Russian government, military and the people,” pointing specifically to Moscow’s war in Ukraine “to protect its own sovereignty, safety and territorial stability.”

    The latest raft of diplomacy comes as shared frustrations with the West have driven the two countries closer – a trend observers say has now been accelerated by the war in Ukraine and has seen North Korea gain a powerful friend in the UN Security Council.

    In March, Moscow vetoed a UN resolution to renew independent monitoring of North Korea’s violations of Security Council sanctions – raising concerns about the relationship weakening controls on Kim’s illegal weapons program.


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