Vladimir Putin’s Trip to North Korea Reeks of Desperation, Not Strength

It must be somebody pretty important in your life to warrant a personal airport pickup at 3 a.m. But that’s the honor North Korean “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un paid to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday morning, greeting the Russian President on a red carpet-laid runway in the wee hours and then riding with him through Pyongyang streets festooned with roses and murals of his stout, balding guest, whom Kim had earlier hailed as an “invincible comrade-in-arms.”

The last time Putin visited North Korea, it was his first year as Russian President and Kim was still ensconced under a fake name at a Swiss boarding school. (Kim’s late dictator father, Kim Jong Il, played host instead.) Twenty-four years on and Putin’s return to the “Hermit Kingdom” comes as he’s embroiled in Europe’s deadliest land conflict since World War II and the younger Kim wields a nuclear arsenal capable of threatening the continental U.S.