Sue Mi Terry and Stephen Sestanovich
This Expert Brief combines interviews with Sue Mi Terry, senior fellow for Korea studies, and Stephen Sestanovich, George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Terry was a deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council from 2009 to 2010. Sestanovich was the U.S. State Department’s ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just signed a new defense pact. Why now?
SUE MI TERRY: Putin capped off his two-day trip to North Korea today with the surprise signing of a new comprehensive strategic partnership pact. The actual text of the document has yet to be released, so the details are uncertain, but the treaty is said to include a mutual defense provision, calling for each country to provide military assistance should the other be attacked.
STEPHEN SESTANOVICH: “Why now?” This is the easy question. North Korea has been supplying Russia with arms for its war in Ukraine, and Putin is paying them off with a great big thank you.
TERRY: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Moscow to look to North Korea for munitions—and Pyongyang has delivered, providing artillery ammunition and short-range rockets that Russia has used against Ukraine. In return, Russia is likely to provide not only economic aid, as North Korea desperately needs cheap oil from Russia, but also military aid to help improve North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program.
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