Vladimir Putin arrived in Pyongyang in the early hours of 19 June to find the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, waiting to greet him as he stepped off his plane. The two men embraced and shook hands on the tarmac as though they were old friends before climbing into the back of a waiting car and setting off into the darkness through streets lined with Russian flags and giant portraits of Putin’s smiling face. As the motorcade glided beneath ceremonial archways proclaiming the eternal friendship of Russia and North Korea, it was evidence of both how far the Russian leader has fallen since his 2022 invasion of Ukraine – that he is reduced to touring this pariah state – and the resilience of the emerging axis of autocracies, that also includes China and Iran, now lining up against the West.
Putin last visited North Korea in July 2000, two months after being sworn in for his first term as Russian president, when he met Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il. Back then, Putin was the young, relatively unknown leader of a Russia still reeling from the demise of the Soviet Union nine years earlier and the ensuing decade of chaos and financial collapse.
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