The dangers posed by a deal between Russia and North Korea

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“sacred fight" against Western imperialism. Both men are throwbacks. Mr Kim is the grandson of a tyrant imposed on North Korea by Stalin.

Mr Putin waxes nostalgic about Russia’s imperial past. Yet the threat they pose today is clear and present. An alliance between them could alter the course of the war in Ukraine by granting Russia a new supply of weapons.

It could also escalate a nuclear-arms race in Asia. North Korea is like an extreme version of what Russia is becoming under Mr Putin: a militarised society, cut off from the West, run by a despot who is heedless of human life. Yet despite its poverty and isolation, it suddenly has something that Russia badly needs: more artillery shells.

Russia is estimated to have fired over 10m of them last year and, like Ukraine, is running low. North Korea, with its Soviet-style armed forces, has millions in storage and the primitive industrial brawn to manufacture more. The failure rate of its shells is high: in one barrage aimed at South Korea in 2010, 20% did not detonate.

But for Russia that is much better than nothing. And North Korea could also offer other weapons, such as rockets or howitzers. Any deal over munitions would come at a delicate moment in Ukraine’s counter-offensive, the painfully slow pace of which has raised new questions about its tactics and Western resolve (see International section).

For now Ukraine has at least achieved parity with Russia in the artillery war, with both sides facing constrained supplies. But were Russia to receive an influx of ammunition, it would be able to pin down Ukrainian forces more effectively, slowing their advances even further and increasing the level of attrition in the coming winter months. North Korea wants something in