North Korea: The future of Russia?

By Georgi Gotev | @GeorgiGotev

The supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, is on a protracted visit in Russia’s north, where he met President Vladimir Putin and was taken to visit a ‘Disneyland’ of military paraphernalia.

Reportedly, both Kim and Putin have long shopping lists.

North Korea may be a small power compared to Russia, but it possesses the conventional munition and armament that the Russian army is getting short of in Ukraine.

Russia has sensitive nuclear, missile, submarine and aviation technology coveted by Pyongyang, which wants to take its arsenal to the next level.

And North Koreans need food. The excessive militarisation of this country of 26 million has frequently pushed the population to the brink of starvation.

I’m not aware of any North Korean jokes, but a joke in Soviet times said that the coat of arms of the USSR should be Cupidon: naked but armed.

Brothers in arms and brothers under sanctions, the two regimes are happy together, perhaps more today than before.

European Parliament lawmakers have cautiously welcomed the European Commission president’s latest defence strategy announcement as a step in the right direction but stressed the need to have sufficient funding and member states on board.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin travelled to Rome on Monday to “help Italy hold its border” as the Italian island of Lampedusa faces a major influx of migrants.

The European Parliament  has called on the EU to give European citizens a stronger voice and more instruments to influence the Union’s decision-making, as well as institutionalise participatory and deliberative processes.

The European Union presented Sunday an emergency plan for Italy to help it handle migrant arrivalsafter a record number of people landed on its island of Lampedusa over the past week.

The EU insisted on Friday that its economy could survive any retaliation from China, after Beijing warned that Brussels’ probe into Chinese electric car subsidies would harm trade relations.

Look out for…

• UN General Assembly, New York, Monday-Friday.
• EU General Affairs Council on Tuesday.
• Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni has exchange of views with Parliament’s FISC committee.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Alice Taylor/Zoran Radosavljevic]