In June 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were seen with happy faces as Putin concluded a whirlwind state visit to Pyongyang. There was joy, fanfare and pageantry as well as some lavish gift-giving, including a joy ride in a second luxury car gifted to Kim.
The two leaders signed a Treaty upgrading their relationship to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ – the highest level of bilateral relations for Russia.
Among the twenty-three articles of the treaty was a clause that brought back language from the 1961 treaty between the Soviet Union and DPRK, pledging mutual immediate ‘military and other assistance by all means at its disposal’ in case of armed aggression on either of the parties.
This biggest divergence from the past formulation was a new reference to the UN Charter’s Article 51, which invokes the ‘inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs’. The treaty serves to create the basis of long-term cooperation across military, economic, socio-cultural, and political aspects of the relationship, including in a number of sanctioned areas such as military and technology cooperation. A strong theme throughout the treaty focused on promoting a multipolar world order.
The treaty also sends a strong signal of defiance to the international community and discourages countries like South Korea from getting further involved in the war in Ukraine. However, this treaty will only add to the momentum and will for the US and South Korea to bolster their bilateral ties and trilateral security cooperation with Japan, and for Seoul to continue building ties to NATO and European states, as Transatlantic and Indo-Pacific security become more intimately intertwined.
Based on available information, Putin’s visit to DPRK does not have a direct impact on China yet. After all, Putin visited China one month before he visited Pyongyang, which more than anything else demonstrated Russia’s prioritisation of China over any other country in its current diplomatic playbook. However, China should be very careful and clear about how to frame its relationship in North East Asia. The treaty indirectly eliminates China’s chance to maintain some sort of good relationship with the West, especially with Europe, Japan, and South Korea. That’s why China could be potentially dragged into conflict against its preference in the near future.
Putin’s visit to North Korea was a huge win for Kim in a number of ways. North Korea is only the fourth country Putin visited after his re-election in March 2024. The new treaty formally puts the bilateral relationship on a strategic, long-term footing. Add to that, the visit underscored Kim as an equal to the president of a major power, working shoulder-to-shoulder to defy global norms led by the West, such as sanctions.
From Japan’s perspective, this new honeymoon period between Russia and North Korea renews Tokyo’s concerns about the further worsening security environment that it finds itself in. Already driven by ‘an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and security of Japan’ posed by China as articulated in its 2022 National Security Strategy, the revitalisation of the Russia-North Korea partnership demonstrated by Putin’s Pyongyang visit further aggravates Tokyo’s sense of urgency of taking measures to safeguard its national security.
One particular concern for Tokyo is the type of technology that might be transferred from Russia to North Korea, which will help the communist country build nuclear bombs that can be used operationally. It will incentivise Tokyo to continue to explore ways to revitalise its defence relationship with Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific political theatres.
In a broader geopolitical context, the Kremlin’s major underlying priority is securing and extending where possible its traditional spheres of influence, and grabbing as many power resources (starting with natural, infrastructural, cognitive, and diplomatic) in the emerging new world order, primarily in Eurasia, the ‘heartland’, but also relying on the Soviet Union global legacies (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America). Having failed to engage Ukraine in the Eurasian Economic Union by 2014 and attacking it militarily in 2022, Vladimir Putin seems to be ready to accept the ‘realities on the ground’ in Europe, turning the bulk of his efforts to the Global South and Global East.
During future NATO Summits, there will be an acknowledgement of the threat that Russia and its Asian partners and allies together present to Europe and a discussion of how to respond to this new reality. At the same time, the Putin-Kim summit also creates an opportunity for NATO to work more closely with the IP4 by sharing information and intelligence related to North Korea-Russia ties and other cross-regional linkages.
As much as some scholars are loathing to describe current geopolitical trends as a new cold war, Russia and North Korea are trying to do just that—recreate the dynamics of the Cold War in an effort to weaken Western influence on the global stage.
They also think the most direct and appropriate response would be for the United States, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines to consider a common collective defence framework, starting at a NATO summit.
The writer is an author of ten books, including three novels. His maiden novel on Kashmir, ‘The Vale Dweller’ was released by Alcove

Publishers in March 2024. He can be reached at [email protected]

Naveed Qazi