SEOUL, South Korea — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-day visit for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, confirmed in both capitals Monday, is likely to accelerate arms and technology exchanges amid deepening ties between the two U.S. adversaries.

But the bigger takeaway from the visit, the first by Mr. Putin to Pyongyang in nearly a quarter-century, may be the hard-earned lessons the Russian leader is likely to learn in anti-Western resilience.

“At the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a friendly state visit to [North Korea] on June 18-19,” Russia’s official news agency Tass confirmed on Monday. Mr. Putin, who has only rarely traveled abroad since launching his invasion of Ukraine nearly 2 1/2 years ago, will also visit Vietnam before returning to the Kremlin later this week.

Though Russian officials did not detail Mr. Putin’s agenda in Pyongyang, the capital of one of the world’s most opaque states, the visit had been widely signaled.

Mr. Kim, who also rarely ventures abroad, traveled in September 2023 to a satellite launch base in the Russian Far East for talks with Mr. Putin, and a reciprocal visit was widely expected. Since September, cooperation between the two heavily sanctioned, anti-Western states has accelerated and Mr. Putin is expected to receive a warm welcome and a possible parade in his honor in the North Korean capital.

With both Russia and North Korea facing an imposing array of international economic sanctions, Pyongyang has stepped up to support Mr. Putin’s military campaign in Ukraine.

South Korea says that as many as 3 million shells and tactical rockets have been transferred from North Korea to Russia, fueling Moscow’s grinding advance in recent months in Ukraine. In return, Russia is believed to have been assisting North Korea with satellite-launch technologies as Pyongyang has faced reverses in trying to get military spy satellites into orbit in recent months.

With North Korea perennially short of oil and food, there are widespread expectations that Russia may barter those commodities, of which it has a surplus, for more arms and munitions, and perhaps for North Korean labor to assist in the rebuilding of captured Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

Russia may also be seeking naval access to North Korea’s northeastern port of Rason. That access would also disperse its Pacific Fleet from its main base at Vladivostok.

Changing attitudes

Mr. Putin last visited North Korea in July 2000, months after being inaugurated as president. Then, he held talks with Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011.

Analysts who formerly believed that millennial Russia would not get too close to the highly toxic North Korea are now changing their minds, as the war in Ukraine drags on, Russian-Western animosity plummets to new lows and Moscow reaches out to a fellow pariah.

“I cannot rule out that the Russian government might one day like to go back to the embrace of the civilized world,” said Andrei Lankov, an academic who studies North Korea at Seoul’s Kookmin University. “But even if that is the case, I don’t think it really influences their attitude toward North Korea.”

Mr. Putin may even be looking to North Korea, often described as a pariah state, for pointers on how to survive politically in the face of a hostile U.S. and international pressure.

“Putin is using the Kim family playbook: The only difference is Kim’s regime is based on dynastic rule and hereditary power succession, while Putin is ruling as a collective leadership of former KGB operatives,” said Leonid Petrov, a Russian-born North Korea watcher and a fellow at Australia National University.

Tightening internal controls in Russia are starting to resemble Mr. Kim’s repressive regime, analysts say, including the recent engineered reelection campaign that secured Mr. Putin another six-year lease on power in the Kremlin.

“There is no political opposition in Russia any more, like North Korea, and the border is being more controlled, in, I think, preparation for a complete shutdown if Putin prepares another mobilization,” Mr. Petrov continued. “Political, economic and personal freedoms are being curtailed in Russia, not to the extent they are in North Korea, but significantly more than just a few years ago.”

While Soviet citizens once tended to look down on poor, isolated North Korea, attitudes are in flux as their heirs in today’s Russia find themselves facing circumstances similar to those endured for decades by North Koreans.

“When I lived in the USSR, North Korea was mocked as being the poorest country of the communist bloc, completely unfree and super-reclusive,” Mr. Petrov recalled. “These days the attitude is more positive: It stood up against U.S. ’imperialism,’ which Putin’s Russia has decided to repeat.”

Modern North Korea is also symbolic of the hard-core, militaristic days of the Soviet Union that many in Russia hope to recapture.

“Russians are nostalgic about the USSR and North Korea is [reminiscent] of what older Russians experienced in their formative years, so the general attitude toward North Korea is more and more positive,” Mr. Petrov continued. “North Korea did not care about international sanctions and that is what Russia is trying to do now: They see the Kim Jong Un dictatorship as strong leadership.”

In Vietnam, Mr. Putin plans to meet Gen. Nguyen Phu Trong, the secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party, President To Lam, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man. The two sides will discuss “a comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and Vietnam in the trade and economy, scientific and technology, and humanitarian fields,” the Kremlin said, bringing a complaint from the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, which has cultivate Vietnam as a security and trade partner in recent years.

“As Russia continues to seek international support to sustain its illegal and brutal war against Ukraine, we reiterate that no country should give Putin a platform to promote his war of aggression and otherwise allow him to normalize his atrocities,” a U.S. Embassy spokesperson in Hanoi told The Associated Press.

The warmer ties between the Kim and Putin regimes pose a problem for Western policymakers, undercutting a policy of isolation and sanctions.

“North Korea never traded with the West and Russia used to, but both sides surprisingly quickly found ways to go their separate paths,” said Mr. Lankov. “Our leverage now is ’blah blah blah’ leverage.”

• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.