Dr Samuel Ramani

In addition to technologies Kim might want to further advance Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs, North Korea will receive about $200 million from Moscow for its troop deployment, according to an estimate from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. “North Korea is not necessarily wanting to back away from the relationship at the moment because it’s given a lifeline as well as a hedge partner against China,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Kim is “willing to commit almost anything that Putin is willing to ask him to do at this point,” Ramani said.

Responding to the remarks by South Korea's president, Samuel Ramani, associate fellow at the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Newsweek: "There have been some provocations that have been occurring towards Seoul over the past couple of days, just the pure movement of North Korean forces, into Ukraine and Russia. "The North Korean state media, KCNA, also released a white paper that was accusing the South Korean president right of exposing the country to the danger of nuclear war. That follows the ICBM test that was occurring, and it reflects North Korea's frustration with some of the injections of U.S. nuclear bombers into air drills with South Korea and Japan, so the combined set of factors has led North Korea to become provocative on the nuclear stage, and South Korean response is probably likely aimed at both the Russia threat as well as the threat that's posed by the North Koreans."

Dr. Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the defense and security think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Newsweek that there is an "ongoing crackdown in the Russian military on key figures accused of corruption."