JRL NEWSWATCH: “Putin meets Kim Jong Un, looking for arms – and friends” – Christian Science Monitor
“Vladimir Putin is often accused of trying to restore the old Soviet Union. But his meeting with Kim Jong Un suggests he might be focusing on restoring ties with like-minded former Soviet allies instead.”
“… Both the Russian and North Korean delegations at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, near the Chinese border, included officials responsible for munitions, suggesting an urgent Russian interest in gaining access to North Korea’s reputedly huge stockpiles of Soviet-standard weaponry to feed its ordnance-intensive war effort in Ukraine. But analysts suggest that something more than a single transaction is underway. … Putin and [] Kim made frequent, if selective, public allusions to the strong Soviet-era relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, and the North Korean leader offered effusive endorsement of Russia’s current struggle against ‘hegemony’
…. Russia, analysts say, has given up on any hopes of reconciliation with the West and as an alternative is rebuilding a semblance of the old ‘Soviet bloc’ country by country, on a bilateral basis, not as an alliance … but something more like a coalition of diverse states ….”