Why Russia props up the dangerous North Korean regime

Neither Russia or China want to say war on the Korean Peninsula because it would be a horrendous nightmare leading to the death of Millions.

They understand there is no clear political solution to this dilemma and have been using a mix of hard and soft diplomacy to deal with the North Korean regime.

The United States, being an 'exceptional nation', has long discarded diplomacy in favor of a foreign policy based on bombing. This will not work in North Korea.

The important thing here is patience, and lots of it. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes juggling going on.

This crisis is a direct result of the United States facilitating endless regime changes without a plan for the future, think Syria, Libya and Iraq.

Patience is the key.

Most of that article seemed speculative to me. The only hard numbers I saw regarded Russia forgiving "some 90% of North Korea's $11 billion Soviet-era debt" in 2012. Everything else was based on words like "increasing" and "weakened" (which give no indication of degree), and fudge words like "believed", "reported", "may", etc. Is the story true? Perhaps, but I'm not going to put a lot of stock into it until it's backed up with a more concrete presentation of facts.

Russia has a pretty well established policy of caring less what the world says or does about them. They also have a pretty good record of ignoring sanctions against them or other countries. Face it, this is a follow the money situation. Russia has everything to gain and nothing to lose by being one of the few countries in the world to ignore sanctions against North Korea.