Kim Jong-un has a new best friend. Out is Donald Trump, who exchanged saccharine letters but spurned him at a summit in Hanoi in 2019. In is Vladimir Putin, who has courted Kim for weapons to fuel his war in Ukraine.

They now have an “unbreakable relationship of comrades-in-arms”, the North Korean dictator gushed in a recent message to his Russian counterpart.

Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Russia in September.Credit: AP

Kim has made two trips to Russia’s Far East to meet Putin since 2019; Putin is expected to arrive in Pyongyang late on Tuesday for his first visit since 2000, the year he became president.

The bromance has blossomed thanks to geopolitical shifts. Kim turned away from talks with America following the failed summit in Hanoi and began making fresh overtures to Russia.

The response was lukewarm – until Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine floundered and Russia came to need munitions, one of the few things Kim’s regime has in abundance. But the implications of the realignment go beyond the weapons trade.

“It’s a mistake to think about it simply as an arms deal,” argues Jenny Town of the Stimson Centre, an American think tank.

North Korea plays a useful part in Russia’s wider confrontation with the West, helping to complicate American strategy in Asia and to undermine multilateral institutions.

In March, Russia vetoed a United Nations resolution to extend the mandate of the Panel of Experts, the main international body for monitoring sanctions on North Korea.

By co-operating with North Korea, Russia also aims to deter South Korea, a big arms producer and American ally, from providing direct lethal aid to Ukraine.

For North Korea, Russia proved a godsend in a time of need. Kim was especially isolated abroad and diminished at home following the debacle in Hanoi; years of sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic had not helped, either.

Trade with Russia has helped stabilise the economy, while summitry........

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