Thursday’s expected summit between DPRK Chairman Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, Russia follows on the heels of President Donald Trump’s second summit with the North Korean leader in Vietnam that ended without an agreement between the two leaders on denuclearization.
Kim may have achieved a ‘victory’ in Hanoi, by once again being recognized as a statesman and leader of a [de facto] nuclear power, achieving a milestone way beyond his father Kim Jong-il’s and grandfather Kim Il-sung’s wildest dreams, but with the failure to obtain an interim agreement and/or even partial sanctions relief, it represents a pyrrhic victory.
The timing of Putin and Kim’s upcoming summit is no accident and reflects a strategic calculation on the part of both leaders that is both precise and useful. It is worthwhile to consider what signals both leaders may be sending to other countries with equities in the Korean Peninsula and its complex, ongoing diplomatic processes.
While Russian-North Korean relations lack the intimacy of Chinese-North Korean relations, of being (as Mao put it) “as close as lips and teeth,” Russia possesses not only deep historic ties with the DPRK , but relevant equities in the outcome of recent diplomacy pursued by Chairman Kim Jong-un, China’s President Xi Jinping, President Trump, and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. This has created tangible diplomatic opportunities for both Chairman Kim and President Putin.
Some of those opportunities include widening trade, Putin’s ability to re-assert what he sees as Russia’s rightful place at the table of international affairs, and Kim’s ability to increase his statesmanlike posture, while seeking much-needed sanctions relief. The recent flurry of high-level diplomatic, military, and political visits between Pyongyang and Moscow – including the recent presence of former Russian Ambassador (also an arms control expert) to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak, is no accident, and reflects careful preparation leading up to the summit on the part of both Russia and the DPRK, allowing for higher chances of a successful outcome.
It might help to understand that Russia’s ties with North Korea date from the late-1940s, when Soviet Political Commissar (later its first Ambassador to the DPRK) Colonel-General Terenti Shtykov was present at, and assisted with, the DPRK’s creation. Such ties remain solid, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s recent May 2018 visit to Pyongyang, where he met with Chairman Kim, have hinted at emerging improved relations. Earlier, in January 2018, President Putin had referred to Chairman Kim as "an absolutely competent and already mature politician,” signaling his desire to establish warmer relations with the DPRK.
Western observers would be mistaken to minimize Russia’s role in ongoing diplomacy with the DPRK, or to rely upon nostalgia as Russia’s mere coin of the realm in this regard. Putin does however, have a history of skillfully combining nostalgia, shared historical experience, and strategic imperatives in improving Russia’s relations with other countries like India and Syria. Who can forget Russia’s Far Eastern Governor General Konstantin Pulikovsky’s fascinating account, “The Orient Express: Through Russia with Kim Jong Il,” recounting his 2001, 3-week train ride through North Korea and Russia. In more recent years, the legacy of the late Russian Ambassador (2001-2006) to the DPRK Andrei Karlov, deserves special mention. He spent a total of 17 years in Pyongyang, including 5 years as Ambassador and he considered North Korea “his second homeland”. He was one of the rare foreign friends of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Il, according to his widow Marina Karlova, who gave an exclusive interview (“The Last Dragoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry”) to the Russian monthly investigative intelligence magazine Sovershenno Sekretno. Karlov said her husband spent many evenings with Kim Jong-Il and his closest associates, dining together and singing Russian/Soviet songs. At Karlov’s request, Kim Jong-Il even allowed the construction of the first Russian Orthodox church in North Korea in 2006. This legacy continues to this day, as Karlov’s closest associate and fellow DPRK expert Alexander Matsegora (quoted in 2017 following Karlov’s tragic assassination as stating, “he [Karlov] is no more, and half of me, too, is no more") is currently Russia’s Ambassador to the DPRK.
After the most recent Trump-Kim summit, the potential of novel trade and economic opportunities beckons, particularly with the expectation of a gradual easing of sanctions against the DPRK. Kim can surely count on Putin to make a compelling argument for partial sanctions relief with respect to agricultural aid (given the DPRK’s poor crop yields in 2018, with a 9% decrease) and healthcare infrastructure (given the DPRK’s raging multi-drug resistant TB epidemic).
Following on the heels of the Trump-Kim summit, Putin likely believes that the next diplomatic steps with respect to the DPRK lead through Russia. This would place Putin in a long, historical tradition of Russian diplomacy in the Far East. Putin is in this sense, would be the inheritor of Russian Ambassadors Shtykov, Karlov, Matsegora, and Russia’s legendary Ambassador to China, the late Igor Rogachev.
Russia may have a valuable role to play in helping resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis, and President Trump, who just last week dispatched his Special Envoy Steve Biegun to Moscow, instinctively knows this, even though the U.S. President’s political options may be limited, given the upcoming 2020 U.S. election. Nevertheless, Trump’s now-famous unpredictability may also come into play, and as Kim, Xi, and Putin have painfully learned, one can never fully discount it.
Observers would not be faulted for the temptation to agree with the late Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin’s famous dictum, "we wanted the best, but it turned out like always,” and this refrain might certainly apply to negotiations involving the DPRK’s denuclearization. As Chairman Kim and President Putin embark on their new diplomatic initiative, Putin can both borrow from the legacy of the late Ambassador Karlov, and remind Presidents Trump, Xi, and Moon of how his and Kim’s current diplomacy may place them at a strategic crossroads. Both countries need a ‘victory’ at Vladivostok with Putin, as a resurgent statesman-diplomat, and Kim, as a responsible leader (and stakeholder), demonstrating his ability to shift from the DPRK’s previous negotiating tactics to finding creative ways to move forward. For Putin and Kim, their mutual diplomatic road leads to, but possibly also ends at, Vladivostok, the last station on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
