Scraping the bottom of the geopolitical barrel, Vladimir Putin’s state visit to Pyongyang affords a rare glimpse into the true state of Putin’s war machine.
The insight is all the more convincing because of the embarrassment that the visit certainly produced in the Kremlin. Here’s the new self-proclaimed king of Eurasia, travelling almost four thousand miles to the pariah state, around 160th in the world in per capita GNI as estimated by South Korea’s central bank, with its 26 million people enslaved for 76 years to the sadistic Kim dynasty. Even the Soviet Union was discomfited by the Kims’ creation: wary of its Marxist brethren in Pyongyang, in all those years not a single Soviet leader visited the DPRK.
Undoubtedly, Putin would have loved to send someone else or at least postpone the trip. No soap. With an estimated delivery of up to 5 million artillery shells and dozens of ballistic missiles to sustain the Kremlin’s war effort and the promise to deliver more from North Korean arms factories reportedly working at “full capacity,” Kim has extracted his pound of flesh. A flagrant violation of the UN sanctions on the DPRK, the arms transfers for which Moscow pays in cash, oil, and assistance in intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellite-launch technology, have exposed Putin’s incessant paeans to his favorite international organization as empty sloganeering.
Putin flew to Pyongyang because, contrary to the glossy picture of the ostensibly humming-along Russian war economy, he cannot prosecute the war without outside help. Apparently the need is desperate enough for Putin not only to swallow his pride but also risk pushing Japan and South Korea, frightened by the Moscow-Pyongyang alliance, closer to NATO and greater support for Ukraine.
The West should take notice of this rare moment of truth that gives the lie to the Putin’s relentless assurances about a Russia capable of indefinitely sustaining what he calls a “long war”–a key propaganda narrative designed to persuade the West to pressure Ukraine to surrender on Moscow’s “peace” terms.
Vietnam is next on Putin’s itinerary–in the hope that there, too, he can buy or barter weapons and ammo that the Soviet Union had dispatched to fight America and repurpose them for what Putin considers essentially the same battle.
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