Putin has been diminished

Vladimir Putin’s journey to Pyongyang to meet fellow dictator Kim Jong-un is emblematic of the Russian leader’s isolation. Just 10 years ago, he was attending meetings of the G8 (now the G7) and rubbing shoulders with the leaders of the world’s richest nations. Now he has to go cap in hand to the pariah state of North Korea to seek both support for his war in Ukraine and the weapons to pursue it.

The old Soviet Union nurtured a partnership with North Korea, but modern Russia had kept this weird dynastic despotism at arm’s length until it became one of the few allies willing to send arms, along with Iran. President Putin has not visited Pyongyang in 24 years, but is now preparing to sign a new strategic partnership.

Russia has already been supplying oil to North Korea in exchange for ballistic missiles and artillery shells to be used on the battlefield in Ukraine. But this might now go further, with suggestions that Moscow would offer Pyongyang nuclear-powered submarine and satellite technology, a possibility that has understandably alarmed South Korea.

Putin has made some major strategic blunders over the past few years, but would he be unwise enough to give Kim Jong-un the wherewithal to be more threatening than he has been already. Moreover, would China let him?

It is not Putin who is the big player in this region but Xi Jinping, and he will not look kindly on the Russian leader trying to muscle in on Beijing’s sphere of influence. Putin may try to present himself as a major world figure; but fawning to the leader of such an odious regime merely diminishes him and his country even further than it has been already.