Meeting with top Russian media figures yesterday, Putin said Kim "is an absolutely competent and already mature politician" who has "solved his strategic task -- he has a nuclear warhead and a global-range missile."
Now, in Putin's view, Kim is "cleaning up the situation, smoothing it, calming it."
Kim and President Donald Trump have engaged in an increasingly sharp war of words as North Korea's weapons programs advance, each of them belittling the other.