HMM: North Korea may end up sending Putin 100,000 troops for his war.

North Korea may deploy as many as 100,000 troops to aid Russia’s war on Ukraine if the alliance between Pyongyang and Moscow continues to deepen, according to people familiar with assessments made by some Group of 20 nations.

The analysis is one of several on the evolving partnership between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the people, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions. They stressed that such a move wasn’t imminent and that military support at that scale — if it occurred — would likely happen in batches with troops rotating over time rather than in a single deployment.

Ukraine’s ambassador to South Korea made a similar assessment earlier this month. Dmytro Ponomarenko said in an interview with VOA that Kyiv expected up to 15,000 North Korean troops deployed to fight in Russia’s Kursk region – and possibly in occupied areas of eastern Ukraine – to rotate every few months.

Spokespeople for South Korea’s Defense Ministry and Presidential Office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The report is a bit thin, but leaning on Third World s***hole countries like Iran for drones and North Korea for munitions and (so far) 10,000-12,000 soldiers isn’t a great look for a would-be superpower about to complete three years of indecisive warfare against a much smaller opponent.