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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea's Kim Jong Un vowed "full and unconditional support" for Russia's Vladimir Putin on Wednesday as the two leaders isolated by the West held a summit that the U.S. warned could lead to a deal to supply ammunition for Moscow's war in Ukraine.
The meeting, which lasted over four hours at Russia's spaceport in the Far East, underscores how the two countries' interests are aligning: Putin is believed to be seeking one of the few things impoverished North Korea has in abundance — stockpiles of aging ammunition and rockets for Soviet-era weapons.
Such a request would mark a role reversal from the 1950-53 Korean War, when Moscow gave weapons to support Pyongyang's invasion of South Korea, and in the decades of Soviet sponsorship of the North that followed.
The decision to meet at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia's most important launch center on its own soil, suggests Kim is seeking Russian help in developing military reconnaissance satellites, which he has called crucial to enhancing the threat of his nuclear-capable missiles. North Korea has repeatedly failed to put its first military spy satellite into orbit.
Putin met Kim's limousine, brought from Pyongyang in the North Korean leader's armored train, at the launch facility, greeting his guest with a handshake of about 40 seconds. Putin spoke of the Soviet Union's wartime support for North Korea and said the talks would cover economic cooperation, humanitarian issues and the "situation in the region."
Kim, in turn, pledged continued support for Moscow, making an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine.
"Russia is currently engaged in a just fight against hegemonic forces to defend its sovereign rights, security and interests," he said. "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has always expressed its full and unconditional support for all measures taken by the Russian government, and I take this opportunity to reaffirm that we will always stand with Russia on the anti-imperialist front and the front of independence,"
North Korea may have tens of millions of aging artillery shells and rockets based on Soviet designs that could bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, analysts say.
Washington has accused North Korea of providing Russia with arms, including selling artillery shells to the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Russian and North Korean officials deny such claims.
But either buying arms from, or providing rocket technology to North Korea would violate international sanctions that Russia has previously supported.
It would both underscore and deepen Russia's isolation in the 18 months after its invasion of Ukraine drew increasing sanctions that have cut off Moscow's economy from global markets and shrunk the circle of world leaders willing to meet with Putin. Wednesday's summit came three weeks after a suspicious plane crash killed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in June launched a brief rebellion that challenged Putin. The Kremlin denied it was behind the crash.
Moscow's priority is success in Ukraine, "and it would do pretty much anything in order to achieve that." said James Nixey, director of Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, a London-based think-tank.
"Russia possibly wants to settle in for a longer war, but it can't meet the necessary industrial capacity," he said, adding that "any deal with Kim would be to ensure that immediate needs are met and any gap is filled by the North Koreans whilst Russia steps up its medium- to longer-term weapons production."
In return, Pyongyang is likely to get food and missile technology from Moscow, "a relatively easy gift" for the Kremlin, Nixey said.
As the leaders toured a Soyuz-2 rocket launch facility, Kim peppered a Russian space official with questions.
Russia and North Korea have "lots of interesting projects" in spheres like transportation and agriculture, he said. Moscow is providing its neighbor with humanitarian aid, but there also are opportunities for "working as equals," Putin added.
He dodged the issue, however, of military cooperation, saying only that Russia is abiding by the sanctions prohibiting procuring weapons from Pyongyang. "There are certain restrictions, Russia is following all of them. There are things we can talk about, we're discussing, thinking. Russia is a self-sufficient country, but there are things we can bring attention to, we're discussing them," he said.
James O'Brien, head of the Office of Sanctions Coordination at the U.S. State Department, said Russia was "scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for help because it's having trouble sustaining its military."
"Russia is now overtly engaging with a country that the U.N. has sanctioned. And that's very problematic for Russia's global position," he told the Associated Press.
A deal between the countries would violate existing sanctions, he said, and would trigger the U.S. try to identify the individuals and the financial mechanisms used to "at least limit their ability to be effective."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a news conference that "any form of cooperation of any country with North Korea must respect the sanctions regime that was imposed by the Security Council."
Wednesday's meeting came hours after North Korea fired two ballistic missiles toward the sea, extending a highly provocative run in testing since 2022, as Kim used the distraction caused by war in Ukraine to accelerate his weapons development.
Despite the frequency of North Korean missile firings, Wednesday's launches were a surprise. South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said it was the first time the North launched a missile while Kim was abroad.
Kim could have ordered them to show he is in control of military activities even while outside the country, said Moon Seong Mook of the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.
Moon, a retired South Korean brigadier general who participated in inter-Korean military talks, said the North could have also intended to express anger after U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Putin was meeting "an international pariah to ask for assistance in a war."
Contributing: Haruka Nuga, Mari Yamaguchi, Emma Burrows, Edith M. Lederer and Jim Heintz
