As the war in Ukraine places unprecedented strain on the Russian Federation’s domestic defense manufacturing, Vladimir Putin has increasingly turned to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to fill critical supply deficits. This transactional relationship has evolved from an ad hoc black-market exchange into a formalized logistics pipeline. Intelligence reports and satellite imagery have tracked the steady flow of heavy munitions from North Korea’s northeastern ports to Russian distribution hubs near the Ukrainian theater.
To date, Moscow has purchased substantial military hardware from Pyongyang to sustain its high-intensity artillery operations:
Artillery Ammunition: North Korea has shipped an estimated five million to eight million artillery shells, primarily consisting of 122mm and 152mm calibers. While Western intelligence notes that a significant percentage of these shells suffer from high dud rates and poor quality control due to decades-old storage conditions, they provide Russia with the sheer volume required to maintain its war of attrition.
Ballistic Missiles: The DPRK has supplied several dozen short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), specifically the Hwasong-11 series (KN-23 and KN-24). These solid-fuel missiles have been actively deployed against Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, offering Russia an alternative strike capability as its own precision missile stockpiles face depletion.
Anti-Tank Missiles and Small Arms: Shipments have also included significant quantities of anti-tank missiles, mortar rounds, and millions of rounds of small arms ammunition.
Financial and Strategic Windfalls for the Kim Regime
In exchange for this lethal aid, the Russian Federation is funding the Kim regime through a combination of hard currency, raw commodities, and sensitive technical assistance. This influx of capital has thrown a vital economic lifeline to an otherwise isolated Pyongyang.
Capital Flow Element
Operational and Economic Impact
Hard Currency Influx
Estimates indicate Russia has transferred several billion U.S. dollars in cash to Pyongyang. This capital bypasses international banking sanctions, providing Kim Jong Un with a dedicated “slush fund” to stabilize domestic currency markets and fund elite luxury imports.
Energy and Food Security
Russia has transferred millions of barrels of refined petroleum products and thousands of metric tons of grain and flour. This direct supply has significantly alleviated domestic energy shortages and stabilized food prices across major North Korean urban centers.
Labor Export Remittances
In defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, Russia has permitted the covert re-entry of thousands of North Korean laborers—predominantly in construction and logging sectors within eastern Russia. Their wages are heavily taxed by the state, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual remittances directly to the regime.
Technical Assistance
Beyond immediate financial relief, Moscow has provided technical telemetry data, space-launch guidance, and engineering insights that directly assisted North Korea’s recent military satellite deployment programs.
In political science, two measurements may determine the strength of political organizations from tribes to states: political coherence and political cohesion.
Do we agree on who we believe we are and with that our sense of mission and purpose in existence?
Do we exist together in good times and bad, in our holidays–and in war or in the depths of distress?
Antagonists — and all political systems have them — weaponize language to break the bonds of a healthy comity through lies — baseless accusations, defamations, and slanders; fabrications, framing, and frame-ups; false narratives and omissions of fact — that do their corrosive work. Promises become doubtful; trust between partners erodes; cultural and social reality even become fair game for “alternative facts” (there are none but fraudulent claims) and the endless invention of fictional speculations and theories. Anything could have happened but what did may meet with deflections of attention and delusional denials of truth especially where the antagonist has committed crimes.
Countermeasures and defenses against disinformation–all lies are that–are but two: empiricism and integrity.
As a Eurasian antagonist to the West, specifically the western civilizational experience characterized as “Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian” in the cultivation and expansion of populations emerging from the Mediterranean Basin in northern and western expansion, Russia has relied on an eastern barbarism in control, financing, and force for its accretion of subjected populations across centuries with itself contracting and expanding with the fortunes of war. It knows itself as having once been a tribute-paying province of the Mongol Empire. Here is an AI report prompted by the query, “Mongol Empire, tribute from Russian principalities” –>
Following the 13th-century Mongol invasion, Russian principalities became vassals of the Golden Horde, paying heavy, regular tribute (in silver, goods, and people) to avoid destruction. This “Tatar Yoke” lasted until 1480, with Moscow eventually dominating tribute collection, which helped consolidate its power.
Key Aspects of the Mongol Tribute System:
Administration: Initially collected by Mongol agents (basqaqs), the system shifted to using local Russian princes to gather the tribute by the 14th century.
The Yarligh: Princes required a yarligh (patent of authority) from the Khan to rule.
The Role of Moscow: Moscow’s princes, particularly Ivan Kalita, secured the right to collect tribute for the Mongols, using this position to enrich themselves and increase their influence over other principalities.
Exemptions: The Russian Orthodox Church was generally exempt from paying taxes, which allowed it to grow in power.
End of Rule: The burden of tribute continued until 1480, when Ivan III refused further payments, culminating in the Great Stand on the Ugra River.
The system of tribute and political dependency heavily influenced the development of the Russian state, fostering centralized, autocratic power.
One may see in today’s assault on the west through a subaltern in the United States the sensibility of Vladimir Putin’s intent to establish a new nobility–the most wealthy of an empowered class–to keep themselves fat off the creativity, entrepreneurship, and labor of Europe and North America. The modern expression of that desire in Ukraine had been looting through skimming the profits of firms through Putin’s henchman Viktor Yanukovych. For America, some similar role would seem in store for Donald Trump and his favored associates and family. Call it “Rule By The Rich”–Americans would be subjected to the capricious desires in greed and power of a class determining their fate with impunity. The permit to lie to the people without apology would likewise seem a part of the Trump-Putin program in autocratic and absolute power.
The Functional and Political Purposes of Lies
Lies have always been told to hide something or to get something. Cover the crime or flatter the boss, the dishonesty always has at least an intended payoff. The emotional motivation for lying has been well explained on BackChannels and may for present purposes be expressed in this modular form addressing “Malignant Narcissism”:
Signal: delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.
For the purposes of political psychology, the malignant narcissist fears public humiliation and shame, something experienced as a child (“Narcissistic Mortification”) and feels compelled to project his image in power as unassailable, courageous, and heroic.
There is beside the emotional motivation additional practical compulsion to lie on behalf of the possession of power, and that is to sustain one’s most loyal associates and family in sharing the wealth associated with it and otherwise keeping all outside the autocrat-narcissist’s circle of power in sharing in power themselves. Those, after all, needs must be subject to the will of the powerful and treated as the property of the state as without inherent value but for their lesser contributions to the wealth of the ruling power’s domain.
What may lies do for installed feudal-medieval mafia and their networks?
Confusion
The “firehose of falsehoods flooding the zone” — or some such — has the effect of confusing issues by making certain the vulnerable (to lies) have no rational anchor for argument while faith alone proves insufficient for political judgment and navigation.
Among the most destructive compendiums of bullshit: conspiracy theories that overwhelm disbelief with disingenuous and endless invention. The false becomes the truth; the irrational–the real; and the suggestion may for a few provide sufficient cause for violence. The sophist’s mind virus may inspire otherwise inexplicable crime e.g., “‘Pizzagate’ Gunman Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison”, NPR, Merrit Kennedy, June 22, 2017; planted in the minds of incurious thousands or millions–similar bundles of crazy would seem to seed cultures — actually, cults — detached from reality and reason altogether.
“Supply” — “Unlimited Narcissistic Supply” — or reward for the malign narcissist may be defined as public adoration and validation without end. For emotional as well as practical reasons (like being arrested by a righteous opponent), few dictators relinquish power of their own accord (only Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf comes to my mind as having the decision to make, albeit it under state and international pressure, and then making it in favor of a transitional democratic mode–even so, and this after leaving Pakistan for London and Dubai, he returned to Pakistan to return to politics. got arrested for unresolved grievances, fled court, and for emergency medical leave again ended up in Dubai).
Political repression in Russia under Vladimir Putin has intensified dramatically, particularly following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, evolving from targeted, selective pressure into a systematic, widespread crackdown that observers describe as the most severe since the Soviet era. The regime has effectively eliminated independent media, banned opposition organizations, and criminalized dissent, with over 1,700 known political prisoners as of late 2025—a figure surpassing the number of political prisoners in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s
Someone must have added the “t” for fame isn’t always fleeting but for some positively fleeing and leaving behind only infamy.
For Putin and others of his vulgar KGB class, the game has turned to arresting corrupt others (state surveillance pays off!) accompanied by the confiscating of their cash (for a rough visit on that subject see Jason Jay Smart’s YouTube videos — e.g., “Putin’s War Cash Grab: $28B SEIZED Inside Russia”) as the Russian state collapses in relation to the disruption of its oil revenues and oil industry and the related distributions that support downstream business and industrial processes. When the chaos, destruction, looting, and treachery abates in Russia, The Money — my guess — and its owners will move into Europe or South America (wherever) to live out their lives as pseudo new colonial investors.
Donald Trump has a state that continues working despite his efforts to discount, overlook, or pervert its Constitution, customs, and laws to suit his exclusive grip and will while his appearance as a dictator — an evil man, an incompetent and vile ignoramus drowning in his own accumulating disasters — grows by the day. He has replaced the best of Federal executives and officials with incompetent zealots loyal to himself, degraded the nation’s counterintelligence and defense agencies by similarly removing any capable of threatening his own authority — add the professionals experienced in investigating him and his mob — and has made the nation — for the first time in history — a doubtful partner in the defense and promotion of compassionate and modern democratic societies worldwide. He appears to view the nation as he imagines himself: embattled and victimized — and the only way out of his miserable condition is to rise to the control of all that would make him feel small again. For what he cannot reason, he reverts always to coercion and force — or, confronted by greater power than himself, he backs away.
It’s ironic that the two world leaders who would most demand for themselves the accolades and approvals of the world — that Nobel Peace Prize for Donald! Respect from the global defense industry for exploring “Hybrid Warfare”, “Gray Zone Tactics”, and “Hypersonic Missiles” for Putin — know themselves as criminals most of all as each holds on to power through coercive methods and the most callous and vain attempts to manage his bloodied ugly image for posterity.
The mirroring couple #TrumpPutin appear to be between states as the criminals, malignant narcissists, and political criminals each has become. Trump, at this point, might wish to be free of the boss of the #RussianMafiaState (one may imagine the reasons for that) and both in the… pic.twitter.com/0RtFXNnF27
The tweeted text follows (with a few hash marks replaced by standard typed English and adjustments for sense) so as to give expression its more persistent showcase in online publishing (a tweet may be noticed and read but briefly as X compiles rapidly and destroys focus as efficiently as it confronts its audience with virtually limitless attention-seeking stimulus).
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The mirroring couple Trump and Putin appear to be between states in their relationship. Trump, at this point, might wish to be free of the boss of the Russian Mafia State (being blackmailed by kompromat might account for that), and he’s been presented with an opportunity involving the post-Cold War clean-up of the former Soviet/post-Soviet spheres of alliance, control, and influence and the severing of the link that has been for a long time Moscow-Havana-Caracas.
While Donald may expect accolades for his conquest of a former Soviet communist satellite, I think he’s proceeding from a different compact with Putin involving the feudal-medieval mafia mentality each has come to represent and he would just as soon make a “gangster’s paradise” out of his invasion of Venezuela. That would help make sense of his low-to-high pattern in pardons of criminals who have injured the United States (e.g., the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists; the recent pardon of drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernandez) and his penchant for locating and targeting mineral wealth from Greenland to Ukraine and working “deals” in which he involves business associates and family in a process that may be referred to as the development of his own personal empire.
Is he betraying his “handler” Putin?
While it looks that way at a glance, Trump in fact may be turning East-West Rivalry on its head and setting up to rule and plunder the wealth of the western hemisphere while leaving Europe and its interests to his rival.
How Americans view the Trump-Putin relationship (mirroring) may be tempered by both political bias (partisan drift) and the American constituency’s general detachment from foreign affairs and international relations. Up to this point, America’s professional business and political managers have understood their having a uniquely American mission from the 20th Century perspective at least. As an American People, the same have negated the power of kings, fought fascism and imperialism worldwide, and tempered totalitarianism as understood from witness of leaders pledged each to the support of his ruling Communist Party.
In fact, the winning of the Cold War had been framed as having beaten Communism, not a practical and ruthless KGB driven and managed police state that could be turned toward serving a dictatorship– a private patronage system–devoted solely to its own aggrandizement, ambition, greed, and security.
So this round is different.
Trump and Putin represent an archaic criminal mentality associated with the malign narcissism and related emotional needs of each, i.e., the equivalent in outlook of what would be today criminal medieval powers engaged in continuous competition for territory and tribute, and then–with the concept of modern feudal-medieval mafia established–related unbridled and unhinged methods in power and enterprise.
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About the Art
The bookends tell in part the Trump-Putin story as one dates to 2016 and has since become an iconic as well as ironic statement about the two statesmen. The other has been captured in relation to Trump’s second-term meeting of the two in Alaska. In the way of a fast-paced meme-spilling web, the composites between reflect, of course, my conclusions about the two and their archaic views of dominion and sovereignty–and both lawless men have reserved for themselves as principle a deeply archaic, deranged, and mentally and morally sick “right” to destroy with their power persons and property alike with impunity. One has ordered the piloting of missiles into apartment buildings and malls; the other threatens to take over the western hemisphere while fueling his own corrupt system of private patronage. Neither should represent anyone’s future governance–not for Russians and never (again) for Americans.
Related to Archaic Leadership and Malignant Narcissism
I’ve whittled related political science and political psychology (#PoliSciPoliPsy) down to this module for X-ting (X-ing . . . whatever)–>
Signal: delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.
They fought to keep #Americans safe–and they were not Americans.
#WeAreAmericans, as represented by past Administrations and national policy across decades, and we promised #AfghaniForces attached to the #GlobalWarOnTerror #GWOT #CoalitionOfTheWilling refuge in the #UnitedStatesOfAmerica. That’s what we stood for when we stood with #RealAmericans.
X #AmericanVeteran #GVC #GrumpyCombatVeteran #WillSelber.
For over twenty years, I’ve spent my life training, studying, and preparing to fight for my country. Even when my country turned its back on our Afghan allies, I, along with thousands of others, tried our very best to “relocate” (IYKYK) thousands of Afghan families to safety. Out of twenty years of futility, it was the only piece of honor that kept many Afghan combat veterans afloat with hope. Now, however, it seems that some of our Afghan allies might be detained and eventually deported – https://www.gcvfriends.com/p/its-not-your-fault.
The base nods its collective head, raises its fists, and shouts its opinion — always someone else’s ideas and words — on the social network.
From the Awesome Conversation
We appear to use our military superiority — and we have it in many areas — judiciously to alter geopolitical space in well defined ways, to hem in ambitious enemies (such as Russia where it has bogged down in Ukraine), and to dampen the spirit for aggression in places like the South China Sea. We don’t just pack our kits and go off to obliterate cultures, governments, and societies. Life just ain’t that simple. I have primer on the subject: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/11/27/a-short-note-on-chinas-contemporary-political-sins/ — anywhere one waltzes in, from Wal-Mart to the Thousand Talents program (our research departments have taken a lot of Chinese grant money, but the same has been also a setup for Chinese espionage) — the realpolitik gets quite tough (for affordable everything — add in the borrowing on the U.S. national debt).
Fair for web search: “China, Wal-Mart”; “Thousand Talents Program”; “U.S., China, Debt”, “Ukraine, American Anti-Tank Weapons”; “China, USA, South China Sea”.
Are Far Right / Far Left Americans just plain lazy when it comes to looking into issues independently?
You tell me.
Too often online, one may come across the “Two Minutes Hate” entirely without legitimacy, sophistication, or substance.
This is not asking 320 million Americans to come up to speed in International Affairs in the way of, say, Belfer Center, but at least take in the best of available, valid, and reliable / clear, accurate, complete reportage. Citizens think; mobs mouth slogans.
In the tags section of this post, I’ve thought of a few dimensions that may need to be approached in some fresh way. I believe I have seen an ugly coarsening of competitive norms between China and the United States in the course of President Trump’s tenure. “Beat the other guy!” Well, we approach deals and games with that competitive zeal, but whether our partner in tennis or in trade, we’re generally not inclined to destroy the same without some related punitive motive. China’s “debt trap diplomacy” and the guile associated with the Thousand Talents Program indicates ambition to dominate more than facilitate healthy development and financial exchange.
Turkey’s resentment towards the European Union is nothing new. Erdogan has been vocal about his negative reactions to some requirements in Turkey’s EU accession process. He is also in a position to pull the strings on much of Europe’s migrant policy, and is making good use of this position. What Turkey’s President has made even better use of is the anti-Western rhetoric and the visions of a “great-again” Turkey. The former has been instrumental in diverting public attention away from a lawsuit in Italy against his son for money laundering.
Apparently, the Greater Turkey vision cannot be realized with the EU constantly demanding things from Ankara that Ankara does not want to do, such as synchronizing its anti-terrorism policies with the EU, for example. It can, however, be realized if Turkey gets on the anti-West bandwagon driven by Russia and Iran, both survivors from Western sanctions, and both having their own regional ambitions.
The “Phantoms of the Cold War”, including Moscow-driven deflection and disinformation, have run through the Syrian Tragedy.
We may have a medieval world in which political experience involves broad illusion and perception managed by very powerful and wealthy personalities.
That’s life.
At this point, we should have had neither the Tyrant nor The Terrorists. I happen to believe — I’m the editor of the blog — that the two are of a whole “theater of politics and combat” in which the victims — dead, displaced, injured, or deeply manipulated — had no inherent value but to serve a new master or collection of them.
If there’s a positive observation to be made, cynically perhaps, or ironically, Syria may be interpreted as a demonstration project of the medieval worldview. The more established that becomes, the more widespread the potential for conflict and similar tracts of death and mass destruction.
I’ve been waffling because I think whether “he” or “she”, it’s Putin who may pick up a round in the “re-medievalizing” of the west’s portion of global politics. He has helped damage political NATO through Hungary (Orban) and Turkey (Erdogan) and, of course, has manipulated terrorism
— and by the way, look up “Moscow, PFLP —
to goad westerner toward a rightly defensive nationalist response, but in the process we lose both a part of our democratic, modern, and tolerant soul.
Despite the Trump-Manafort-Yanukovych experience, Trump, who seems to be trying to figure these politics out from a cold start — and he knows he’s a beginner as politician, but he’s a fast learner too — may well stand up for American constitutional arrangements and values and temper the demagoguery with our culturally INCLUSIVE ethos, related ideals, and extensive development of law and policy across years.
Hillary might wind up in the same place — there is an “American Way”.
Missing from public popular perception: the Cold War — check out BackChannels for that (https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/ftac-interpreting…/) and how business and politics among the world’s most powerful and wealthiest people, Putin and the oligarchs among them, hew themselves to feudal models. Perhaps we are doing that now — and Hillary, by way of the necessity of delivering a Constitutional American experience to the American people, will also have to confront Putin (and the Phantoms of the Soviet in the Middle East and around the world).
Muslims – this from an American of Jewish descent who has tired of religious cant: no one “wins” anything with either a supremacist or totalitarian outlook and permit for barbarism.
The medieval worldview, fully on display in Syria, promotes political absolute power.
Whether Putin, Assad, or Khamenei or Baghdadi — “Different Talks — Same Walk!” applies.
Also, Center-of-the-Universe Christian, Jewish, or Muslim self-concept seems to me a remnant of medieval history.
The enemies of the west — extremists Red-Black, Brown, and Green / old comrades, new nationalists, and Islamists — need that worldview sustained, but the democratic open societies of the west, also secular in governance and humanist in ideals, simply don’t need that anymore.
We have all to make this choice about which world we would prefer to live: the medieval world (let it go, please) or the modern one (where we investigate issues and address problems every day in the interest of greater peace and prosperity plus human dignity and freedom).
I’ve edited some between the “Awesome Conversation” and this post, but in essence feel we need greater distinction in time between medieval worldviews and related governance and the same under the umbrella of the modern worldview.
The argument between Russia — a revanchist neo-imperial state — and its allies and clients and NATO, God bless that old alliance — may be distilled as “Medieval Absolute Power” vs “Modern Democratic Distribution”.
We may have a long way to go with that “argument”, but at least we should see it for what it is.
BackChannels 