Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin is ready to hand out modern weaponry to its allies – which include rogue states lead by unpredictable dictators like North Korea and Iran.
Moscow values its ties with countries in Latin American, Asia and Africa and that it is ready to offer modern weapons to its allies.
“(We) are ready to offer our allies the most modern types of weapons, from small arms to armoured vehicles and artillery to combat aviation and unmanned aerial vehicles,” Putin said at the opening ceremony of the Army-2022 forum near Moscow.
“Almost all of them have been used more than once in real combat operations.”
Missing Europe and America off the list, he added that Moscow values its ties with countries Latin American, Asia and Africa without specifying its closest allies by name.
He was speaking nearly six months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, where Moscow has suffered repeated setbacks and heavy losses.
Western military analysts say the poor performance of Russian troops and weaponry could make its arms exports less attractive to potential buyers, such as India, which have heavily relied on its technology in the past.
It comes after the tyrant discussed the Kremlin’s relationship with another nuke-mad despot, Kim Jong-Un.
He told the North Korean leader the two countries will “expand the comprehensive and constructive bilateral relations with common efforts,” Pyongyang’s state media reported on Monday.
In a letter to Kim for Korea’s liberation day, Putin said closer ties would be in both countries’ interests, and would help strengthen the security and stability of the Korean peninsula and the Northeastern Asian region, North Korea’s KCNA news agency said.
Kim also sent a letter to Putin saying Russian-North Korean friendship had been forged in World War II with victory over Japan, which had occupied the Korean peninsula.
The “strategic and tactical cooperation, support and solidarity” between the two countries has since reached a new level is their common efforts to frustrate threats and provocations from hostile military forces, Kim said in the letter.
KCNA did not identify the hostile forces, but it has typically used that term to refer to the United States and its allies.
Kim predicted cooperation between Russia and North Korea would grow based on an agreement signed in 2019 when he met with Putin.
North Korea in July recognised two Russian-backed breakaway “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine as independent states, and officials raised the prospect of North Korean workers being
sent to the areas to help in construction and other labour.
Ukraine, which is resisting a Russian invasion described byMoscow as a “special military operation”, immediately severed relations with Pyongyang over the move.
And now Putin has turned his targets on space, claiming that he’s close to adding satellite-busting lasers to his arsenal of weapons.
The Kremlin has been developing technology capable of blinding orbiting platforms collecting intelligence overhead for decades.
Since 2019 Putin’s generals have been able to call on mobile unit Peresvet to obscure its secret plans on the planet below.
Now it is set to add a new laser system known as Kalina to its weaponry options.
A report by the Space Review said: “There is strong evidence that a space surveillance complex in Russia ’s northern Caucasus is being outfitted with a new laser system called Kalina that will target optical systems of foreign imaging satellites flying over Russian territory.”