North Korea is sending around 10,000 troops to Ukraine to fight alongside Russian forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.
Zelensky, speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, said North Korea has already sent tactical personnel and officers to Ukraine and is “preparing” to send 10,000 soldiers.
“But they didn’t move them to Ukraine or to Russia,” Zelensky said, adding Kyiv would share more information when it becomes available.
Zelensky spoke after meeting Thursday with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the western security alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
Rutte told reporters that he discussed North Korea with Ukraine and that NATO was “very worried” about the situation, but did not back Zelensky’s specific claims.
“We have no evidence that North Korean soldiers are involved in the fight,” he said. “But we do know that North Korea is supporting Russia in many ways, by weapons supplies, technological supplies, innovation. It’s highly worrying.”
The U.S. has also not confirmed that North Korean soldiers are fighting in Ukraine, and the Biden administration has said it is looking into the claims.
South Korea’s spy agency said Friday that North Korea is preparing to send four brigades, around 12,000 troops, to Ukraine, according to Yonhap News Agency.
North Korea has long supplied Russia with artillery shells and short-range ballistic missiles in return for access to critical technology and financial aid.
But the cooperation deepened this year after Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to North Korea in a rare trip in June. Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to a mutual defense treaty that includes defending each other in the event of an armed attack.
Zelensky publicly claimed for the first time this week that North Korea was sending troops to Ukraine after reports that some of the country’s soldiers had died in the fighting.
Russian forces are pressing Ukraine across the 600-mile front and are making incremental progress in the eastern Donetsk region, although at a high cost.
Zelensky unveiled a five-point victory plan this week, a strategy he first presented to the U.S. last month, which includes accepting Ukraine into NATO, boosting air defense systems and lifting long-range weapons restrictions, strengthening the Ukrainian economy and providing a non-nuclear strategic deterrence to Kyiv, among other points.
Zelensky told reporters Thursday that if western allies do “not lose their unity we will not lose.”
“Ukraine, together with our partners, knows how to achieve its goals,” he said.
