Kim and Putin buddy up against the West

• US House speaker Kevin McCarthy opened an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
• More than 5,300 bodies have been counted in the city of Derna after devastating floods in Libya.
• Ten people were reportedly hospitalised in south-west France with a rare form of botulism food poisoning.

Kim Jong-un on the Siberian express

Kim Jong-un has met Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest spaceport in far eastern Siberia. US officials suspect the pair will discuss a deal for North Korea to supply Russia with ammunition in exchange for much-needed food and military tech. 

So what? The meeting tells us a lot about the state of the West’s adversaries. 

Putin needs a fix. The days when Stalin’s factories churned out tens of millions of artillery shells, tanks and bullets are long gone. Russia is using an estimated ten million shells a year in Ukraine but can only produce two and a half million. 

Kim Jong-un is the military equivalent of a back-street drug dealer who has not updated his stock since the ’90s. His stuff still packs a punch, but you only ask him when you have no other options (other reported clients include Syria, Iran, Eritrea and the Wagner group).

But it’s still a partnership that Ukraine and the West’s allies in East Asia will watch nervously. We are “together in [the] fight against imperialism,” Kim told Putin. 

Magical mystery train. Like his father before him, Kim makes his journeys by armoured locomotive. This is partly for show as the journey becomes a propaganda spectacle, but also because he doesn’t trust his country’s fleet of ageing Soviet-era planes to get him somewhere in one piece.

The weight of bulletproof glass and the poor state of North Korean railway lines means the train can only travel at an estimated speed of 37 miles an hour. But it allows plenty of time for entertainment:

• The train is thought to contain a karaoke room, satellite control rooms and female entertainers to serenade the 39 year-old. 

• One Russian official who travelled with Kim’s father in 2011 said there was a team of chefs on board, as well as delicacies and fine wines flown in from Paris.

• A Mercedes limousine is usually towed along, as well as a helicopter. 

• On his last trip to Russia in 2019, officials ran next to the train as it came into the station, wiping all the potential handrails Kim might use. 

Train-plotting. It’s thought North Korea has a stockpile of tens of millions of munitions that would generally be compatible with Russia’s Soviet weapon systems. 

It’s also not outside the realm of possibility that North Korea could also offer to send mercenary fighters to the Ukrainian front or workers to boost production.

Kim could ask for several things from the Kremlin in return. Most likely he wants help from Russia to launch a much-coveted spy satellite, which  would allow him to monitor potential attacks and guide his own missiles more accurately. His space agency has already made two failed attempts this year. 

“That’s why we’ve come here,” Putin told a Russian reporter at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. “North Korea’s leader is very interested in rocket technology.” 

North Korea also desperately needs food. The Hermit Kingdom has been almost entirely cut off from the world for the four years since the pandemic. Harvests are failing and the UN says nearly half the population are malnourished. 

Kim’s ultimate prize would be nuclear propulsion technology, which allows submarines to travel further and more quietly.

• Earlier this week, he launched a “Korean-style tactical nuclear attack submarine” which appears to be a modified Soviet-era Romeo-class submarine acquired from China in the 1970s. 
• The thing looks fearsome but it’s diesel-electric, meaning it uses the same noisy tech as the Nazi U-boats – not match for any modern navy.
• But even with Russia backed into a corner, experts reckon it’s unlikely that Moscow would give up such a crown jewel for old munitions.

Behind the scenes? But let the dust settle and something far more troubling could emerge from Kim’s Siberian sojourn. Mark Galeotti, a seasoned Russia watcher, notes in The Times that any deal with North Korea could also be used by China as a backdoor to help Russia “without directly courting Western sanctions.”

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