Russia is one of the members of the six-party talks on North Korean nuclearization, but its views on how to deal with this problem do not agree with those of the U.S. Government. This signifies a gap between Moscow and Washington over the proper way to deal with proliferation and represents a change from the earlier pattern of bilateral cooperation in 1987-96 that led to significant achievements in the field of arms control and nonproliferation. We may attribute the major differences between Moscow and Washington to several factors, but two stand out here. One is that Moscow prefers a different model of resolving proliferation issues than Washington apparently does. Moscow's preferred option is the so-called Ukrainian model, whereby the proliferating state is induced to relinquish its pursuit of nuclear weapons through a multilateral negotiation in which it receives both economic compensation and security guarantees from its partners. This is what happened with regard to Ukraine's inheritance of thousands of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) after 1991. The second model, apparently preferred by the United States, is the so-called Libyan model which is based on the experience of unrelenting coercive diplomacy, including sanctions and possible threats of actual coercion, until the proliferating state gives in and renounces nuclear weapons in return for better relations with its interlocutors. In the case of North Korea, Moscow believes that the Ukrainian model is the way in which the negotiators must proceed if they wish to bring this issue to a successful resolution. Seen from Moscow, the United States appears to be more inclined to choose, instead, the Libyan model based on its policy of threatened regime change, coercion, sanctions, etc. This disparity between Pyongyang's intransigence and America's inclination to coercion, which reinforces the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) stance, is viewed as a major reason for the current stalem