(Reuters) - Russia signed a strategic partnership treaty with Iran on Friday that follows similar pacts with China and North Korea. All three countries are adversaries of the United States, and Russia has used its ties with them to help blunt the impact of Western sanctions and boost its war effort in Ukraine.

Russia signed a strategic partnership treaty with Iran on Friday that follows similar pacts with China and North Korea. All three countries are adversaries of the United States, and Russia has used its ties with them to help blunt the impact of Western sanctions and boost its war effort in Ukraine.

As South Korean authorities extended President Yoon Suk Yeol's detention, his supporters stormed the courthouse that issued the warrant, smashing windows with police shields.

During his first term in office, U.S. President Donald Trump applied his particular brand of diplomacy with Washington's adversaries, publicly befriending Russia and North Korea while separately piling pressure on China and Iran.

As North Korean troops dispatched to Russia become increasingly involved in combat with Ukraine, China is upping its pressure on North Korea with crackdowns on North Korean workers.

With the fate of suspended South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol hanging in the balance, the country has also been left facing an uncertain future as it battles through the resulting political turmoil.

The Budapest Memorandum of December 1994 provided security assurances to Ukraine for giving up their nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War, there was a time when China would have been paranoid about Russia and North Korea conspiring behind its back. Those worries, however, are now relics of a bygone era characterized by a radically different balance of power among this authoritarian triangle.

Trump needs to make clear to Russia and China that the United States will not abandon the targets of their aggression, Ukraine and Taiwan.

Japan on Thursday formally inaugurated an independent mission to the NATO military alliance as Tokyo and NATO seek to bolster cooperation amid escalating tension from Russia, China and North Korea.

Kim Jong Un has been using the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme as his “insurance policy” to stay in power, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, said. There was a serious need to lower the risk of “an inadvertent war” between North and South Korea since the breakdown of Pyongyang’s talks with Washington,