What’s known, and not known, about the partnership agreement signed by Russia and North Korea

Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un say the strategic partnership they signed Wednesday is a breakthrough. But neither side has released the text of the agreement that resulted from their summit in Pyongyang, and its consequences for the near and long terms are uncertain.

Relations between sprawling Russia and small, isolated North Korea — both of them nuclear powers — have warmed significantly in recent years amid Russia’s growing acrimony with the West over the invasion of Ukraine and suppression of all domestic opposition.

The new agreement could bring them even closer, while also posing new challenges to the international community.

What’s in the new partnership, according to Kim and Putin:

What defines aggression?

Putin told a briefing after the signing that “the comprehensive partnership agreement provides, among other things, for the provision of mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this document.”

That sentence raises an array of questions.

The first is what might be considered “aggression.” Both parties historically have used the word to denounce actions that fall far short of a physical attack, or even a cyberattack.

North Korea takes an especially broad view. Pyongyang commonly terms the combined military exercises held between the United States and South Korea as “aggression,” describing them as invasion rehearsals. It often conducts its own missile tests or other military displays as part of a tit-for-tat retaliation.

Nor do the so-called aggressions need to be actual actions. It has denounced U.S. criticism of North Korea’s human rights record as “the main means of aggression, together with military threat, (that) the DPRK will have to