Putin and Kim up to no good

US intelligence showing Russia is supplying the technology and expertise needed by Stalinist North Korea to build a submarine-launched nuclear missile system underlines the significance for the entire Indo-Pacific region, including Australia, of Vladimir Putin’s first visit to Pyongyang in 24 years. It is the second meeting of the two leaders in a year, after Kim Jong-un took his bulletproof train to Russia’s far east last September for a summit with Putin at a spaceport.

Far more than just gladhanding and a further deepening of bilateral ties is involved. It is imperative the world’s democracies are alive to the threat implicit in Putin’s ostentatious embrace, after more than two decades, of Kim in the North Korean capital rather than in Moscow.

It may be that the first order of business for Putin is to reassure himself of North Korea’s ability to continue supplying the munitions he desperately needs for his war against Ukraine. It is widely acknowledged the 11,000 containers of North Korean missiles, rockets and artillery shells that Kim has supplied so far have saved the day for the Russian despot’s forces in Ukraine. The 700,000 troops Putin claims to have deployed there have a voracious appetite for ammunition that cannot be met by Russia’s state arsenals, which have been in decline since the Cold War.

In contrast, as The Times noted, since the end of the Cold War North Korea has been working feverishly to arm and equip a mass army for an anticipated invasion of South Korea. According to The Times, North Korea’s missiles, rockets and artillery shells “may be far from top quality but they are available in quantity”.

In return, however, madcap, unpredictable North Korea led by Donald Trump’s “fat boy” friend Kim, having passed the point of experimenting with land-based ballistic missiles vulnerable to US attack, wants – with Russian help – to build a submarine-launched nuclear missile system capable of launching attacks across the Pacific. That is a prospect, however far into the future, that should sound alarm bells across our region and beyond. It is one that all the hype surrounding the tyrants’ Pyongyang summit indicates we must prepare to confront.