North Korea exploited Russia's isolation to improve its own economic and military position while giving away little, Riddle Russia argued in a note by the political scientist Roman Chernikov published on August 25.

The war in Ukraine has removed the constraints that had kept Moscow at arm's length from Pyongyang. Before 2022 Russia played bridge between the Kim regime and an alarmed international community, and large joint projects were considered too toxic to attempt. Once Russian oil started reaching world markets the same way North Korean oil did, through the shadow fleet, and the front needed shells in quantities only a country that had spent its whole history preparing for a major war could supply, the objection disappeared.

Two visits, 24 years apart

Chernikov frames the change through Putin's two trips to Pyongyang. In July 2000 he went to persuade Kim Jong-il to abandon the missile programme, which would have made Moscow the negotiator the West could not be and removed Washington's stated rationale for missile defence in Alaska. Putin emerged claiming Kim had said North Korea was prepared to use only other states' rocket technology for peaceful space exploration, and took the success to the G8 summit in Okinawa. On August 12 Kim told a visiting delegation of 56 South Korean media editors that he had promised nothing of the sort and had spoken "in passing, as a joke".

The 2024 visit was between equals. The Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that replaced the 2000 agreement provides that "if either party is subjected to armed attack by any state or several states and thus finds itself in a state of war, the other party shall immediately provide military and other assistance". Putin was still saying at that point that North Korean soldiers were not in question: "We are not asking anyone for this, no one has offered it to us, so there is no need."

From approval to complicity

Pyongyang moved early. On March 2 2022 it voted against the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia, one of only five no votes with Russia, Belarus, Eritrea and Syria, and in July it became the second country after Syria to recognise the so-called DPR and LPR.

The Korea specialist Andrei Lankov is quoted on why that cost Pyongyang nothing: "The war with Ukraine has created a situation in which North Korea can easily give Russia diplomatic gifts in the expectation of reciprocity. Pyongyang is ready to become one of those voices, especially since it costs it nothing."

The reciprocity came on the missile programme. North Korea had observed a moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests since April 2018. On January 30 2022, with the invasion still in preparation, it launched its largest rocket in five years, a medium-range system. In March it launched the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, and three more in May, one assessed as intercontinental. When Washington moved to tighten UN sanctions, Russia and China vetoed the resolution.

Trade grew off a very low base. It was $3.78mn in 2022, held down by North Korea's slow post-pandemic reopening, then rose almost ninefold to $34.4mn in 2023 and stayed at about $34mn in 2024. Official 2025 data has not been published; new categories have appeared, including beer, cigarettes and rapeseed oil, and Moscow has acknowledged that the second major block after consumer goods is hydrocarbons.

Oil above the cap, and no panel to count it

The logistics were built out in 2024: a road bridge at Hasan and Tumangang across the Tumen, recently completed, alongside the Hasan to Rason railway, on which in 2021 Russian diplomats and their families had to leave the country by handcar. North Korea reopened to Russian tourists.

The Nakhodka to Rason sea line matters more. UN Security Council sanctions imposed in 2017 cap North Korean oil imports at 525,000 tonnes, or 4mn barrels, a year. A joint investigation by iStories and the Open Source Center found at least 50 tankers shuttling between Russia and North Korea in 2024, delivering approximately 1.3mn barrels. Britain sanctioned the Fuel Bunker Company servicing the Nakhodka terminal in May 2024.

The mechanism that would have documented this no longer exists. In 2024 Russia vetoed the renewal of the UN Security Council panel of experts monitoring the sanctions, calling the regime "divorced from reality". China abstained.

Shells, then soldiers

The bulk of arms deliveries came in 2023, after a visit to Pyongyang by Sergei Shoigu, then Russia's defence minister. UN experts confirmed in spring 2024 that the Russian army had struck Kharkiv with a North Korean Hwasong-11 missile, and deliveries that year became the basis for US sanctions on individuals and companies.

Almost nobody expected troops, and Chernikov quotes the sceptical case from Konstantin Asmolov, a Korea specialist who publishes in pro-government Russian media: "First, purely technical problems will arise with logistics and the availability of military interpreters. Second, it is a reputational blow to the Kremlin. Can Russia really not cope with Ukraine without North Korea's help? And third, as soon as we have this kind of foreign specialist, it will open the door to analogous actions by the West."

It happened anyway, under secrecy and only on internationally recognised Russian territory, in Kursk region. Putin stopped denying foreign troops there in October 2024; official confirmation came in April 2025, timed so North Korean generals could attend the May 9 parade as brothers-in-arms.

Contact has stayed dense since. Shoigu, now secretary of the Security Council rather than defence minister, flew to North Korea three times in 2025 and met the North Korean minister of state security Ri Chang-dae in Moscow in May. State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin visited in April 2026. Lavrov went in July 2025, and North Korean foreign minister Choe Son-hui came to Moscow in July 2026, declaring that "Pyongyang's full support for the domestic and foreign policy of the Russian Federation is unshakeable".

Chernikov's conclusion is that the balance of the relationship runs the other way from the one Moscow presents. Pyongyang restored tourist flows, secured goods and oil, and acquired combat experience in Kursk that becomes an argument in its dealings with Seoul. Zelenskiy says a larger North Korean deployment is being prepared, and Reuters has reported North Korean missile units moving to Voronezh region, which would let Pyongyang keep to its practice of fighting the war without crossing Russia's borders.