Kim Jong-un. (Photo: WikiMedia/President.go.kr).
by Enrico Oliari –
North Korean President Kim Jong-un’s armored train has arrived in Vladivostok, in neighboring Russia. The occasion is the Eastern Economic Forum, which sees over 4 thousand state representatives and diplomats invited, but the eyes of the world are on the North Korean leader’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which should be held tomorrow in a location not yet disclosed.
A summit that worries Washington above all, so much so that the spokesperson of the State Department, Matthew Miller, reiterated that “any transfer of weapons from North Korea to Russia violates the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council”, adding that the United States “will not hesitate to impose new sanctions”.
In reality, it is certainly not the sanctions that make an impression on Kim and Putin, at the head of already heavily sanctioned countries, so the two will almost certainly discuss military cooperation and the mutual sale of weapons and spy satellites, as well as the supply of food and of energy to North Korea.
So much so that the North Korean president would be accompanied by the head of the People’s Army Ri Pyong-chol and the deputy head Pak Jong-chon, the director of the war industry Jo Chun-ryong, the president of the committee for space science and technology Pak Thae-song and Navy Admiral Kim Myong Sik.
The North Korean delegation will also aim to lift at least part of the UN Security Council sanctions thanks to the veto that Russia can exercise.
As regards armaments, the recent visit of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Shoigu to North Korea for the purchase of artillery ammunition to be used in the Ukrainian conflict was highlighted, while Pyongyang is aiming for Russian help for the development of space technology, but also to the purchase of submarines with missile capabilities.
The Ukrainian war, which started with NATO’s decision in 2008 to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia, has made the world multipolar, and between Brics+, creation of new energy corridors, coups d’état in West Africa and today opening to North Korea, to be the West is suffering, finding itself alone with the Zelensky match in its hand.
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