The high-profile meeting of the two dictators in the Russian Far East ended in virtually nothing, at least in public statements.
Putin and Kim did not announce arms deliveries / photo kremlin.ru
Moscow and Pyongyang never announced the conclusion of an agreement on the supply of North Korean ammunition for the needs of the Russian army in Ukraine. Having analyzed the circumstances of Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia, the newspaper The New York Times named two main reasons for this.
The publication notes that once Washington and Moscow filled the Korean Peninsula with weapons, acting within the logic of the Cold War. But now history has turned upside down, and today the flow of these weapons can turn in the exact opposite direction.
During his visit to Russia on September 13, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said that he and Vladimir Putin had reached a “satisfactory agreement” on “immediate issues of cooperation.” What exactly is behind these words, one can only guess. Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang are likely to disclose the details of the agreements, if they relate to weapons, because trading arms with North Korea and providing it with military technology is a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, which Russia itself voted for.
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Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the State Department in Washington, described the meeting as Mr. Putin “begging Kim Jong Un for help.” But not only Russia is asking for help on the Korean Peninsula, the NYT notes.
“Under agreements quietly struck with Washington, South Korea has been delivering large quantities of artillery shells to the United States for months. It insists it is not supplying any lethal weapons directly to Ukraine. But its supplies to the US military help free up US stockpiles that Ukraine can use in the fight against Russia,” the publication notes.
The NYT notes that there is currently no evidence of the use of South Korean missiles by Ukraine and North Korean missiles by Russia, respectively. So an arms deal between Kim and Putin may prompt hawks in South Korea to call for their weapons to be sent directly to Ukraine. This may be another reason why Moscow and Pyongyang are likely to remain silent on such arrangements.
According to analysts’ estimates, North Korea may have up to 10 million artillery shells of 100 mm caliber or more in its warehouses. All NATO countries combined have a smaller arsenal. The only question is how quickly North Korea will be caught off guard, if they do begin.
Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia – no arms deal
As UNIAN wrote, the day before North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un arrived in Russia, where he met with Vladimir Putin. Even before this visit, the mass media reported on Moscow’s plans to exchange Korea’s boundless arsenals of artillery shells for modern technologies for the construction of nuclear submarines and space rockets.
But despite the whole day of communication between the two dictators, they never confirmed the fact of negotiations on this topic. Their meetings for observers were limited to protocol filming and compliments addressed to each other. At the end, Putin and Kim did not hold even a short briefing for the press and did not issue a final communique of the visit.
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Fuente: espreso.tv
