Letter From the Editors

George Santayana famously said, “Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.” This adage seems to hold true for nations, too; they don’t have to agree on everything to call each other “friends.” Case in point: The Russian media were abuzz with speculations about Vladimir Putin’s amicable signals to North Korea and Vietnam, which he visited on two successive days. Each visit was preceded by an op-ed penned by the Russian president and published in the respective countries’ leading newspapers.

Proceeding in reverse order (and ascending order of ominousness), let’s look first at Putin’s friendly overture to Hanoi, which appeared in Nhan Dan, the Vietnam Communist Party newspaper: “We appreciate the fact that our countries have similar approaches to pressing issues on the international agenda,” the article reads. According to Vedomosti, such issues include the situation in the Asia-Pacific region. Putin also thanked Vietnam for its balanced position on Ukraine.

Never mind that Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy” (so called for the fact that it bends in the wind without breaking) also enables it to cultivate cordial relations with Russia’s arch enemy, the US.

Putin’s friendship with Kim Jong-un has more “spots” in common. In his op-ed for the daily Rodong Sinmun, the Russian leader writes that the “friendly and neighborly relationship between Russia and the DPRK, which is based on the principles of equality, mutual respect and trust, goes back more than seven decades and is rich in glorious historical traditions.”

Yes, yes, but why did Putin bother to travel 9,000 kilometers to Pyongyang to reaffirm an already solid friendship? This is the question that troubles Aleksandr Zhelenin, and the most likely scenario he can come up with is quite chilling: Putin went there to nudge the Asian bad boy to stir up trouble in a different part of the world. Zhelenin writes: “A North Korean attack against South Korea to ‘unite’ the two Korean states would be an incredible gift for Putin right now. Just imagine, Pyongyang attacks South Korea with its whole entire huge army.” Spinning out this alarming scenario, Zhelenin adds that China would of course come to its ally’s aid. “In other words, there would be a repeat of the first Korean War. With the only difference being that North Korea did not have nuclear weapons or means of delivering them during the first war, but it does now.”

As if a parallel to the 1950s were not enough, Vladimir Zelensky drew a comparison to the even more dire 1930s. On the eve of the Swiss peace summit on Ukraine, he explained why Russia was not invited by denouncing Putin’s terms for ending the war (these include Kiev’s withdrawal of troops from Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye Provinces). In Zelensky’s words, these terms are exactly like Hitler’s in the run-up to World War II: “He would say, ‘Give me a part of [Czechoslovakia] and the war will end,’ but he was just lying because after that came Poland.” The Ukrainian president concluded: “This is what Nazism is about and we can’t trust Putin because he’s on the very same path.”

Even without a Russian delegation present, the 100+ nations at the peace summit managed to agree on only three points of Zelensky’s 10-point peace formula: nuclear security, food security, and the release of war prisoners and deportees. Friendship in spots, indeed.

Friendly relations within the CIS seem to be wearing even thinner. Izvestia reports that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has declared personal enmity against Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, alleging that batka aided Azerbaijan in the 2020 Karabakh war: “I hereby state that from now on, I will never go to Belarus. As long as President Aleksandr Lukashenko is in Belarus. And the fact is that from this time on, not one official representative of Armenia will go to Belarus. Not one.” Despite this démarche, Belarussian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz responded: “It’s important to understand that we have long-standing, close, friendly relations and a shared history with Armenia.” The Armenians must be wondering: With friends like these, who needs enemies?