North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mosfilm Chips In Too

170-mm shells now unlocked for Russian use

N. Korean 240 mm during drills

Mosfilm director informed Vladimir Putin that the film company has handed over twenty-eight T-55 and eight PT-76 tanks to the Russian military.

That is a powerful arsenal for a film company to have, but I’m afraid if the Russian army is taking the PT-76s from 1950 for anything other than to melt them things aren’t looking up so well.

Meanwhile, North Korea has sent something beefier. North Korean 170-mm artillery pieces were photographed on a train in Siberia. Supposedly 50 of the things were sent:

They’re big and beefy cannons and all, but the real significance is that it’s a caliber that Russia doesn’t use, but North Korea does. Now that Russia has 170-mm cannons, courtesy of Pyongyang, it can start exploiting North Korea’s stockpiles of the shells of this size.

Reportedly twenty 240-mm rocket artillery pieces were also transferred, albeit for them we don’t have photographic evidence. Same deal here, Russia doesn’t have launchers in 240 mm (uses 220 mm), but with these, North Korean stockpiles of 240 mm are unlocked for Russia.

But there’s something else I want to show you. This is North Korea’s Foreign Minister on a visit to Russia earlier this month:

Such resolve! There are Russian ministers who couldn’t with a straight face state a commitment to the SMO this resolute.

Of course this is rhetoric (they even sprinkle in a reference to the “wise leadership” of Vladimir Putin which at this point reads like irony), but it is clever. Russia thirsts for all manner of support right now: material, manpower, even rhetoricial. And since the rhetorical support costs Koreans nothing, why not lay it on thick, and lubricate those oil transfers.

What a springtime for North Korea this has been, DC thought the new nuclear state could be sanctioned to the hilt and forgotten about, but circumstances changed and Pyongyang found a way to make itself a thorn in the Empire’s side once again — and get a great deal of resources in the process.

To DC’s chagrin Russia receives more artillery shells from North Korea than Ukraine receives from all of Europe combined. Russia for its part dismantled the UN Panel of Experts, the UN’s North Korea sanctions compliance monitor built up since 2006, so that it may safely ship resources in the other direction.

I leave you with a wholesome video of Russian soldiers in an unspecified forest teaching Korean comrades a few words unsuitable for TV:

BTW, the Koreans are all in Russian gear, which you wouldn’t do on a bilateral exercise, but you would do if you were planning on fighting together and you needed to deny OPFOR the ability to easily distinguish and single out the North Koreans for extra strikes.

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