Comrades in arms? Questions for the west over mutual aid deal

As state visits go, Vladimir Putin's arrival in North Korea yesterday was relatively low-key.

- Justin McCurry

There was no long line of senior government officials waiting on the airport tarmac in Pyongyang and only a small guard of honour.

Beneath an ink-black sky, the Russian president stepped off the plane to be greeted by a handshake and a hug from Kim Jong-un before being presented with a bouquet by a woman in a traditional hanbok. But the modesty of the occasion was deceptive.

Putin arrived in the North Korean capital from Moscow via the Russian far east, his convoy making its way to the Kumsusan state guesthouse in the early hours.

Despite or perhaps because of -the unsociable hour, the two men reportedly shared their "pent-up, inmost thoughts", according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency, but the world would have to wait for how those frustrations would feature in their two-pronged challenge to what Putin reportedly called during his visit the "hegemony and imperialism" of the west.

The inclusion of a mutual aid clause in their agreement requiring one country to offer assistance if the other were attacked - was a sign of how far Russia-North Korea ties have come since Putin's first visit to Pyongyang 24 years ago.