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For more than a year Russian president Vladimir Putin has been trying to get North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to visit for talks but has been forced to sit on the sidelines as Mr Kim instead sought to strike a deal with US President Donald Trump. Talks with Mr Trump broke down in February over a failure to agree on curbs to North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for economic support. And two months later, Mr Putin's wait was over.
On Thursday, Mr Kim made his first ever visit to Russia for the first summit between the two leaders, and Mr Putin laid on the charm. Red carpets, military bands, and a glowing toast to the friendship between the two countries all featured in a summit heavy on gushing gestures but light on concrete policy outcomes.
But both men got what they wanted in Vladivostok, a port city on Russia's Pacific coast, close to the North Korean border. Mr Kim demonstrated that he's a man in demand and that he has other potential international allies if talks with Mr Trump continue to fail to make progress. And Mr Putin demonstrated that Russia is still a geopolitical diplomatic heavyweight, noting after the talks had ended that Mr Kim had personally asked him to convey the results of their meeting to Washington and Beijing.
During the Soviet Union, Moscow was a key supporter of Mr Kim's grandfather's rule over North Korea, and Mr Putin has sought to rekindle those ties, offering energy and trade deals if sanctions are lifted. Also, thousands of North Korean migrant workers work in Russia, and their incomes are critical to the communist country's ailing economy, but they face deportation under UN rulings this year. Their fate and the future of negotiations over the Korean peninsula could well be affected by how Washington and Beijing respond to Mr Putin's freelance diplomacy.
