Russia and North Korea’s partnership is troubling. But perhaps there is some good news to be found in Putin’s trip around Asia.

From WORLD. [Last] week Russian dictator Vladimir Putin visited North Korea. It was Putin’s first trip to Pyongyang in 24 years, and his sojourn seems inspired in equal parts by geopolitical need and historical nostalgia.

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Russia has been increasing its support for North Korea, including missile and satellite technology and other illicit weapons, oil and gas, and money laundering. The two nations even signed what was described as a mutual security pact. This Russian empowerment of North Korea increases the risk to American allies South Korea and Japan, not to mention the United States itself. It is yet another example of Putin’s unrelenting hostility to America.

Russia in turn relies on North Korea for help with sanctions evasion, menial labor in its fields and factories, and—critically—rockets, artillery shells, and other ammunition for its very costly invasion of Ukraine. In that respect Putin’s trip reveals Russia’s weakness. He arrived in Pyongyang as a supplicant. …

North Korea is sometimes called “the world’s last Stalinist regime.” This is apt, as the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin literally created the nation of North Korea. …

Something else in Putin’s Asia itinerary bears noting. That is the Russian leader’s upcoming stop in Vietnam. Here again are the echoes of the Soviet past. During the Cold War, the USSR was North Vietnam’s main supporter … Putin’s visits to both Pyongyang and Hanoi represent his efforts to recapture what he sees as the glory days of the Soviet empire with its global client states.

Meanwhile Vietnam and China, despite both being communist governments, are historic rivals. … Vietnam today remains very wary of China, and the two nations are jockeying for power and territorial influence throughout Southeast Asia and the South China Sea.

Putin and Xi Jinping have infamously declared there are “no limits” to the new Moscow-Beijing alliance. It is indeed a formidable and worrisome pairing. …

Yet Putin’s errand to Asia this week suggests there may indeed be a limit to the Russia-China partnership. Beijing no doubt sees Putin’s trip for what in part it is: a quiet effort to assert some measure of autonomy from China by renewing the Kremlin’s ties with North Korea and Vietnam. In the complex chess board of geopolitics, this is a small crack in the Moscow-Beijing axis that American strategists should watch—and consider ways to exploit.

How are you praying about Putin’s visit to Pyongyang? Share your thoughts and prayers below.

(Excerpt from WORLD. Photo Credit: Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78329714)