Putin meets Kim Jong Un, looking for arms – and friends

“This is about countering the so-called rules-based international order, which has undermined its own rules by sanctioning many countries, like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and lots of others,” says Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser. “Some of those rules might be reasonable, but then they [the West] go and violate their own rules when it suits them. Russia is a country that’s too big to be sanctioned, and it can bring together those countries in a common cause.” Russia, analysts say, is rebuilding a semblance of the old “Soviet bloc,”...