They make an odd couple. One is smiley-faced and chubby. The other is thin-lipped and scowls a lot. Both are dictators, sinister, brutal and unaccountable in their different ways. Both have made it their mission in life to overturn the post-1945 global order, defying the US, its chief patrolman. And both are sanctioned, ostracised and a little bit feared by the countries of the west.

Those fears are likely to intensify after yesterday’s Pyongyang summit, both symbolic and substantive, between this unofficial Laurel and Hardy tribute act. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un – the plump one – and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – the skinny one – have a shared aim: consolidating their place in a bullish anti-western, anti-democratic alliance, ostensibly representing a “new world order”, reaching from China to Iran.

Like most world leaders, Putin, the dominant partner in an oddball relationship, paid scant attention to Kim prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. All that changed with the onset of war.

It was a gift to Kim. His idea of international diplomacy is to issue threats to acquire leverage he otherwise lacks. His efforts mostly revolve around test-firing ever-longer-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US’s west coast (as well as South Korea and Japan), and developing and miniaturising North Korea’s nuclear bombs and warheads.

Yet following the collapse of Donald Trump’s pantomime peace palaver with Kim in Hanoi in 2019, snail’s-pace talks with Washington DC and its........

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