Putin and Kim Jong Un’s new alliance is proving to be a win-win
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a military parade in Pyongyang in June, 2024.
Earlier in the week, South Korea’s intelligence services offered a glimpse of the upgraded alliance between Russia and North Korea in action.
North Korea has been sending vast shipments of artillery ammunition to Russia, a lifeline in the invasion of Ukraine that has isolated it from much of the world.
North Korea since 2022 sent 13,000 shipping containers to Russia that may contain up to 6 million shells, according to an intelligence report cited by a South Korean lawmaker.
It is a vastly larger cache than Ukraine’s collection of Western allies has managed to pull together, despite being vastly wealthier.
Ukraine’s European allies fell well short of a goal of delivering 1 million shells to Ukraine in the year to May 2024.
The North Korean supply line means Russia can continue sustaining its grinding war of attrition in Ukraine for the foreseeable future, say analysts, as it seeks to corrode international support for Kyiv and waits for Ukraine to run out of ammo.
And on the other hand, North Korea is receiving technology to help it advance despite being a pariah state.
A new use for old guns
Old-fashioned munitions have become vital once more in Ukraine, where fighting often resembles the grueling trench warfare of World War I. And with both sides firing thousands of rounds a day, volume counts.
Unlike the sophisticated precision-guided weapons provided to Ukraine by its Western allies, shells don’t rely on GPS systems for guidance, so can’t be countered by electronic warfare units that scramble their coordinates.
They’re something that North Korea has in large supply.
“While in most respects the DPRK lags behind NATO states in military technology, mass production of artillery shell ammunition doesn’t require sophistication,” Jacob Parakilas, a defense analyst at RAND Europe, told B-17.
He said that since 1953 North Korea has been preparing for a resumption of an “existential” war with the US, building up massive stockpiles.
The unquenchable need for ammunition in Ukraine means that North Korea’s large stash found an unexpected new value, allowing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to broker a deal with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that’s proving fruitful for both sides.
In return for crates of old-fashioned shells, Kim’s getting valuable military technology from the Kremlin.
“Russia can offer some fairly important incentives in terms of technology transfer, which Pyongyang may judge to be more valuable than a portion of its armaments reserve,” Parakilas said.
According to reports, Russia may be providing North Korea with satellite technology that enables it to surveil and more accurately target military sites belonging to the US and its allies in east Asia.
Russia has also used its diplomatic power as a permanent UN Security Council member to shield North Korea, using its veto in April to hobble the commission that monitors North Korea’s nuclear program.
Most of the globe has long sought to isolate North Korea and pressure it to dismantle its nuclear weapons. The Kremlin’s new stance is an abrupt U-turn.
And Kim may be able to leverage Russia’s need for shells still further to secure more technology its antiquated military badly needs.
“North Korea’s air force, for example, is woefully small and desperately in need of more modern aircraft to be a viable fighting force,” Parakilas explained.
A precarious alliance
But while both leaders are reaping short-term gains, there are problems on the horizon that could derail the alliance.
While North Korea is delivering the shells Russia needs in volume, their quality is often shoddy, and there are doubts over North Korea’s capacity to keep up the deliveries.
“Ukrainian sources suggest that the shells Russia has received from the DPRK are dated — some allegedly manufactured in the 1970s and 1980s — and are of poor quality, having a high rate of failure,” said Daniel Salisbury, an expert on arms proliferation at King’s College London.
And Putin’s decision to draw closer to Kim is endangering his relationship with his most important ally, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Analysts told B-17 in June that Xi is watching the security alliance between Russia and North Korea warily, concerned that it could upset the balance of power in east Asia and spark a conflict China would sooner avoid.
A Cold War alliance renewed
But for now, it’s a relationship that both pariah leaders are reaping benefits from, renewing an alliance formed decades ago when the Kremlin helped arm North Korea in its fight against the US and its allies in the Cold War.
“Much of the matériel it has produced during that time will still be at least minimally viable for Russian purposes, since the bulk of its weaponry is Soviet-designed and therefore compatible with what Russian forces use,” said Parakilas.
