This is John Bachelor, conversation with colleague David Maxwell about the news that Russia has vetoed

at the United Nations Security Council continuing monitoring of the sanctions regime directed at North Korea for its

many provocations and its proliferation of ballistic missile technology, suspect nuclear

weapons technology, a bad actor.

Russia has vetoed the monitoring of those sanctions, asking David Maxwell how Russia and China and North Korea worked together or is it a setting

one against another?

Here's David Maxwell, long-time analyst for the Korean Peninsula, to explain how Beijing and Moscow and Pyongyang

are looking to work together as parts of the axis of resistance?

Oh, no, I think, I think, Kim Jong-un is trying to be like his father and grandfather

and be able to play both China and Russia for its own ends.

But I think China also is pleased with this relationship from the fact that China wants Russia to be successful in Ukraine, but it does not want to get its hands

dirty providing lethal aid.

And so North Korea provides an excellent cutout from China's perspective to provide that

lethal aid to help Putin win his war in Ukraine.

And so, you know, this very transactional three-way relationship is really right now to the mutual benefit of all three

and and they are all uh... not i think

working together per se as an alliance, but they're all working in their own interests and their interests are aligning sufficiently for them to cooperate during this period.

More of this later.