‘There’s a Price for Being Russia’s Enemy’: Putin, Kim Aim to Intimidate U.S.
Russian President Vladimir Putin needs North Korea — not just for its weapons, but also to help deliver a warning to the U.S. and its allies: There will be a significant price to pay for any nation that gets on the Kremlin’s bad side.
That was one of the key points made by former CIA Moscow station chief Daniel Hoffman, who said during an online forum Tuesday that Mr. Putin’s recent meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was an acknowledgment by Moscow that it has become increasingly reliant on pariah states such as North Korea amid diplomatic isolation and heavy economic sanctions from the West.
But Mr. Putin had another motivation, one that seems to have driven the decision to publicly play up the mutual defense pact that the two often wary neighbors signed during their historic summit last month.
“I think that Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang — it’s definitely part of his cold calculus. It’s also a bit of an act of desperation. He needs North Korea, and he also needs the relationship to be very much public,” Mr. Hoffman told the Washington Brief, a monthly forum hosted by the Washington Times Foundation.
The mutual defense agreement, which on its surface seems to indicate Russia and North Korea will come to the other’s aid if attacked, may have also given Mr. Putin a powerful messaging tool against those who seek to isolate the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine. (Read more from “‘There’s a Price for Being Russia’s Enemy’: Putin, Kim Aim to Intimidate U.S.” HERE)
