Lavrov’s visit to North Korea coincided with the withdrawal by the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the ratification of the treaty banning nuclear tests, which should alert the international community to the nature of cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.
It is significant that Lavrov’s trip followed a month after Kim Jong-un’s visit to Russia: the head of Russian diplomacy is currently preparing a return visit by Putin to North Korea. The intensification of dialogue between the two terrorist states promises new risks and threats to humanity.
Putin is seeking to create an anti-Western coalition, securing the support of countries in the global South. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been sharply condemned by Western countries: unprecedented sanctions have been imposed on the Kremlin, slowly but surely weakening its economy. Additionally, the myth of the «world’s second army» has been shattered, as it failed to achieve any of the set military objectives. Consequently, struggling Putin is returning to the tried and tested method of nuclear blackmail.
Russia possesses nuclear technologies inherited from the USSR. Against the backdrop of increasing antagonism towards the West, the Kremlin could offer these technologies to its geopolitical proxies: namely, Iran and North Korea. While the former seeks to obtain its own nuclear weapons, official Pyongyang already has a nuclear arsenal with which it regularly blackmails its neighbors. Russia could transfer the necessary technologies to Pyongyang to bolster its nuclear status. This aligns entirely with Putin’s logic of creating global geopolitical instability: Russia is too weak for direct confrontation with the West, thus it seeks to create hotbeds of local wars and conflicts for extensive political destabilization.
Russia’s actions could push humanity to the brink of nuclear war: Putin regularly voices veiled nuclear threats against the West. His dialogue with Korea and Iran is a challenge for the democratic part of humanity. Russia has long passed the point of no return: sanctions and complete international isolation would be a logical response to the actions of a terrorist state.