The Kim-Putin Summit is a big deal. Kim does not travel out of the country very often, and the last time he ventured out to meet with President Trump in 2019, it went poorly.
Both countries are facing serious difficulties, and both have a limited group of friends and allies to turn to for their respective needs.
So what will they do? In the near term, Russia could obtain North Korean weapons and equipment, armament parts, access to production lines, or even Korean personnel.
North Korea needs food and it may want help with its satellite program, defenses against natural disasters, and military assistance for weapons systems that have run into technical difficulties. North Korea also needs things Russia can’t provide, just as Russia needs things that the DPRK cannot provide, like US dollars. But challenging circumstances will make both countries eager to find common ground.
A change in Russia-DPRK relations may be simply a transactional, short-term arrangement that gets reversed by one side or the other at some point in the future. Or it could mark a substantial and consequential deepening in relations. In the near term, it likely means that the volume of weapons used against Ukraine will increase. And Russia can be expected to use its veto power at the UN to protect North Korea from international sanctions or censure.