With the unveiling of a granite memorial complex and museum in Pyongyang on 26 April, North Korea has moved its military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine from the battlefield into stone and state ceremony. The Museum of Combat Feats of Heroes of Overseas Military Operations, inaugurated in the presence of Kim Jong-un, Russian defence minister Andrei Belousov and State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, commemorates the first large-scale foreign deployment of North Korean forces since the 1950s. By enshrining the Kursk campaign as a heroic ‘special operation’ alongside Russia’s own nomenclature, the two pariah states have fused their historical narratives in a manner that extends far beyond temporary arms transfers.

Viewed from Washington, the ceremony amounts to the most theatrical repudiation yet of the sanctions architecture designed to isolate both capitals.