New Delhi, June 25 : Nearly a quarter century after his first visit as the newly-minted Russian President, Vladimir Putin was back last week in North Korea, where he met its leader Kim Jong-un - son of Kim Jong-il who he had met in 2000 - for talks on economic, security, and global issues and signed a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

This unprecedented pact was cited as "the groundwork" for future bilateral relations in all spheres, including cultural and tourist ties, trade, economic relations, and security. Tellingly, it also includes a pledge by both to assist each other in case of "foreign aggression", amid what both termed efforts by the US and its allies "to destabilise the situation in Southeast Asia".

How should the development, which created frisson in the region, especially among neighbours South Korea and Japan and concern in the US, especially when Putin warned his country could arm North Korea on the same pattern as Western nations were supplying weapons to Ukraine, be seen?

First, it was not the first meeting between the two leaders. The North Korean leader, in his first visit out of his country after the Covid outbreak - had visited Russia's Far East in September last year and was hosted by President Putin, who travelled eastward.

While it is tempting to pass it off as a case of two isolated - but scarcely to be ignored - and heavily sanctioned countries reaching out to each other for mutual support, history and geopolitics indicate the two are far from chance partners thrown together by the vicissitudes of diplomatic realignments and their statecraft choices.

Like Russia, which has plenty of friends across the world, North Korea is not entirely alone either. Both Russia and China are old allies, and despite agreeing to sanction it over its nuclear weapons programme or disinclined to back it in any reckless adventure, they acknowledge its use in keeping the US, South Korea, and Japan on edge.

And then Russia's predecessor, the Soviet Union not only helped create - and then safeguarded - North Korea, but for good measure, also selected its first leader - and his family is still in power.

Kim Jong-un's grandfather Kim Il-Sung was handpicked by Stalin to become North Korea's leader after the Japanese were driven out at the end of the Second World War. His son and successor Kim Jong-Il - whom Putin met in 2000 - was born Yuri Irsenovich Kim in Soviet Russia in 1941 or 1942.