Russia and North Korea’s relationship, reinforced by their 2024 comprehensive strategic partnership treaty, raises three key questions.
Will Russia-DPRK cooperation continue to strengthen and grow; how much does Moscow value DPRK military cooperation in Russia’s war against Ukraine; and what assistance is Russia likely to provide North Korea?
The broad answer is that Moscow is walking a fine line. It will focus, narrowly, on maintaining North Korea’s pipeline of support for Russia’s war effort, but must ensure it manages China’s concerns that the Russia-DPRK partnership might undermine regional stability.
Moscow’s relationship with Pyongyang is highly transactional. It bloomed because Putin was urgently seeking materiel from partners willing to violate UN Security Council and other sanctions in his war against Ukraine.
For his part, Kim Jong Un wanted a path to global acceptance of his nuclear weapons program and UN sanctions relief that only a UN Security Council permanent member like Russia could facilitate. Kim also almost certainly hopes North Korea will gain both valuable Russian defense technology and military experience from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The DPRK is one of a handful of countries that have recognized Russia’s claims on occupied Ukrainian territories since 2014. This diplomatic support, especially following Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, led to a mutual defense treaty and other forms of assistance, including lethal military assistance to Russia that few other countries were willing to provide.
Following the treaty’s signing, Pyongyang deployed troops to assist Moscow in expelling Ukrainian troops who occupied Russia’s Kursk border region from August 2024 through March 2025. However, Pyongyang to date appears to have restricted the deployment of its troops to Russian territory only; there is no evidence that DPRK troops have fought in Ukraine. It is unclear if this was a condition imposed by Pyongyang or Moscow.
Moscow’s apparent aim is to provide Pyongyang with incentives to maintain a flow of North Korean munitions, including ballistic missiles, troops, and labor for Russia’s military-industrial production. These incentives include billions of dollars (of much-needed hard currency), diplomatic legitimation of Kim’s isolated regime, battlefield experience for his military, and perhaps the prospect of transferring nuclear and other military technology. Moscow probably seeks to limit the tech transfer to Pyongyang because it still pursues its policy of non-proliferation, does not want to antagonize Beijing, which it views as a much more important partner, and believes it can secure military benefits from North Korea without sharing its most closely guarded secrets.
Moscow-Pyongyang diplomatic engagement slowed early this year, possibly because Russia’s National Security Council Chair and former Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu had lost favor with Putin, and Russia’s ambassador to the DPRK for more than a decade, Alexander Matsegora, died in December 2025.
Moscow was slow to restore the sudden lapse in active engagement between the two capitals, probably because its defense needs were shifting to drone warfare and long-range attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure, which the DPRK was less equipped to support. However, Russia’s manpower and territorial losses and Ukraine’s effective targeting of Russia’s energy and military infrastructure throughout the first half of 2026 probably contributed to Moscow’s decision to reinvigorate its relationship with Pyongyang.
The temporary slowdown in what had been a rapidly developing partnership exposes how Moscow’s attention and commitment to Pyongyang are limited largely to its immediate defense needs. The transactional nature of the partnership suggests that the relationship might be of little value to Russia beyond the war.
Like other major foreign policy decisions, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow almost certainly did not inform Beijing of its treaty plans with Pyongyang. Beijing likely was surprised and alarmed by Russia-DPRK’s rapidly developing ties. China has since come to warily accept the relationship while likely privately signaling that any activity by Moscow that could destabilize the status quo on the Korean peninsula is unacceptable to Beijing.
While pursuing its war policy objective of acquiring DPRK weapons, Moscow has promoted trilateral Russia-China-DPRK strategic cooperation, almost certainly to assuage Beijing’s concerns and secure its support in addition to projecting Russia’s power and heightened security role in Northeast Asia. However, both Beijing and Pyongyang have rejected these efforts.
If Pyongyang agrees to and implements Moscow’s escalated requests for ballistic missiles (a missile unit deployed to Western Russia in August), labor for drone production, and more troops, Ukraine, with the help of increased material and support from its allies, should consider special targeting of the DPRK’s presence in Russia.
In doing so, they could pressure Kim to raise the costs he imposes on Russia in exchange for his support. This pressure could force Moscow in turn to reassess the value of what Pyongyang is willing to provide.
David Abramson served for 20 years as an analyst in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where he covered Russian foreign policy (2017-2025) and Central Asia (2005-2017). In 2023, he was seconded to the UK’s FCDO Research Analysts, where he wrote and briefed on Russia-China relations. Prior to INR, he worked for four years in the Office of International Religious Freedom within the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Dr Abramson received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Indiana University. He has numerous publications on Central Asia spanning topics such as Muslim identity, Islamic education, political Islam, and civil society.
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