LONDON • They smiled, shook hands, chatted politely and then left. The summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, held in Russia's far eastern city of Vladivostok, had no particular agenda and no particular outcome.
But to a large extent, that was the beauty of the entire exercise. For the meeting was not designed by Russia to defuse the nuclear showdown in the Korean peninsula, let alone lay the foundations of a new security architecture in Asia.
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