President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, revived a Cold War-era mutual defense pledge between their nations on Wednesday, signing a new agreement that calls for them to assist each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.
The Russian president, in a briefing after the two leaders signed the document, did not clarify whether such assistance would require immediate and full-fledged military intervention in the event of an attack, as the now-defunct 1961 treaty specified. But he said that Russia “does not exclude the development of military-technical cooperation” with North Korea in accordance with the new agreement.
The pact was one of the most visible rewards Mr. Kim has extracted from Moscow in return for the dozens of ballistic missiles and over 11,000 shipping containers of munitions that Washington has said North Korea has provided in recent months to help support Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine.
It also represented the farthest the Kremlin has gone in throwing its weight behind North Korea, after years of cooperating with the United States at the United Nations in curbing Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program — a change that accelerated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This is a truly breakthrough document, reflecting the desire of the two countries not to rest on their laurels, but to raise our relations to a new qualitative level,” Mr. Putin added. Neither North Korea nor Russia immediately released the text of the new agreement.
Mr. Putin denounced the United States for expanding military infrastructure in the region and holding drills with South Korea and Japan. He rejected what he called attempts to blame the deteriorating security situation on North Korea, which has carried out six nuclear test explosions since 2006 and tested intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the United States.
“Pyongyang has the right to take reasonable measures to strengthen its own defense capability, ensure national security and protect sovereignty,” Mr. Putin said.
Mr. Kim called the pact a “most powerful agreement” and praised the “outstanding foresight” of Mr. Putin, “the dearest friend of the Korean people,” the state-owned Russian news agency RIA Novosti said.
The pledge of mutual assistance is likely to further alarm Washington and its allies, particularly South Korea, because it could not only provide further support for Russia’s war in Ukraine but also undermines efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
Mr. Putin’s remarks recalled the 1961 treaty of friendship and mutual assistance between Pyongyang and Moscow under which the two countries were obliged to “immediately extend military and other assistance” with all means at their disposal, should one of them find itself at war. That treaty became defunct after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
When Moscow and Pyongyang signed a friendship agreement in 2000, it lacked a clause on automatic military intervention, calling only for mutual “contact” if a security emergency were to arise. It did not stipulate military intervention or military aid.
Mr. Putin is the first major head of state to visit North Korea since the pandemic, highlighting its importance to Russia: It is one of the few like-minded countries able and willing to supply Moscow with badly needed conventional weapons.
Mr. Kim gave the Russian leader a red-carpet welcome early Wednesday in Pyongyang, the North’s capital. His energy-starved government flooded downtown Pyongyang with bright lights as the two leaders were driven in the same car — the Russian-made Aurus limousine that Mr. Putin gave Mr. Kim last year — to the state guesthouse.
Despite sweltering heat, huge crowds were mobilized to a welcoming ceremony for Mr. Putin in the main square of Pyongyang later Wednesday, complete with goose-stepping honor guards and colorful balloons released into the air. The crowds waved paper flowers and the national flags of the two nations as Mr. Putin arrived.
“I don’t know any other country where a person breathes so freely,” Pavel Zarubin, a Russian state TV correspondent known for his fawning coverage of Mr. Putin, said in a video posted on Telegram from Kim Il-sung Square.
As negotiations began, Mr. Putin touted a new strategic partnership document that the two leaders had signed at the summit.
“We greatly appreciate your consistent and unwavering support for Russian policy, including with regard to Ukraine, in light of our fight against the imperial policy the United States has pursued over decades in relation to the Russian Federation,” Mr. Putin told the North Korean leader.
Mr. Putin, who last visited North Korea shortly after becoming president in 2000, noted the changes in the capital over the intervening years and said the city had become beautiful under Mr. Kim’s leadership. He expressed hope that the next meeting between the two leaders would take place in the Russian capital.
In his remarks, Mr. Kim underscored what he called Russia’s role in supporting strategic stability and balance in the world, according to reports in Russian state media. The North Korean leader reiterated his support for Russian operations in Ukraine, cheering a new era of prosperity in relations between Moscow and Pyongyang, the state news reports said.
Later on Wednesday, Mr. Putin was scheduled to visit the only Russian Orthodox Church in North Korea, built in the mid-2000s.
Mr. Putin has received artillery shells and missiles from North Korea to help fuel his drawn-out war in Ukraine, according to American and South Korean officials, though both Russia and the North have denied any arms transfers. For his part, Mr. Kim covets Russian help in easing his country’s oil shortages, improving its weapons systems and undermining Washington’s attempts to strangle its economy with international sanctions.
The pledge of mutual assistance announced on Wednesday presents a threat to the global push for the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. Moscow once joined the United States in imposing United Nations sanctions on countries like North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs, but those days seem to be over.
“I don’t think he’ll ever sign up to that again,” said Michael A. McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and the director of Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, referring to Mr. Putin. “I think he’s decided we’re the enemy, the liberal international order that the United States anchors is over, and he wants to see its destruction.”
Weeks before Mr. Putin’s trip, Moscow used its veto power at the U.N. Security Council to disband a panel of U.N. experts that helped to enforce sanctions aimed at making it more difficult for North Korea to develop its nuclear arsenal.
In a column published in Rodong Sinmun, the North’s main state-run newspaper, on the eve of his arrival, Mr. Putin denounced the United States’ “worldwide neocolonialist dictatorship” and lauded Mr. Kim for resisting “the U.S. economic pressure, provocation, blackmail and military threats.”
North Korea’s economy has been devastated by sanctions, and Mr. Kim is intent on capitalizing on the partnership with Mr. Putin. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday called the deepening ties between the two leaders “an engine for accelerating the building of a new multipolar world.” Rodong said the two nations were “in the same trench” in the struggle against Washington and its allies.
Mr. Putin’s visit to North Korea “demonstrates that our security is not regional. It’s global,” NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in Washington on Tuesday at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
“What happens in Europe matters for Asia, and what happens in Asia matters for us,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. “This is clearly demonstrated in Ukraine, where Iran, North Korea, China are propping up, fueling Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”
North Korea’s military has long been ridiculed for its backward technologies and vast stockpile of outdated Soviet-era weaponry, such as artillery shells. But the fact that Mr. Putin was visiting Pyongyang for the first time in 24 years demonstrated how such old-fashioned munitions are among those that Russia most desperately needs in its war of attrition in Ukraine.
