North Korea could deploy as many as 100,000 troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine if the alliance between Pyongyang and Moscow continues to deepen, according to people familiar with the assessments of a group of 20 countries.

The analysis is one of many on the Russian president’s evolving partnership Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Unsaid the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. They emphasized that such a move was not imminent and that military support on that scale – if it were to occur – would likely come in batches with troops rotating over time, rather than in a single deployment.