From the look of it, Putin is now negotiating arms deals with North Korea. North. Korea. Let that sink in. A small, dirt poor country with a stupid megalomaniac anointed "dictator for life" by his father, mismanaging the country and making his people starve to finance a barely functional missile project and to acquire some very limited nuclear weapons capability at an astronomical cost.
If the mighty Russian army is seeking help from North Korea, they are really desperate. The political backlash will be irreparable, and the amount of actual help North Korea can possibly give is so small that it shouldn't even matter to a country many times larger. It is more clear than ever that Putin has almost nothing left: no weapons, no allies, no way out of the mess he put himself into, and no way back into the good graces of the international community. His reign of terror, greed and corruption may well be on its last legs, and he is not invulnerable. His end could come swiftly.
