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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine speaks at a meeting of the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 17, 2024. (EPA/Yonhap)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed Thursday that North Korea is preparing to send 10,000 troops to Russia.

Ukrainska Pravda and other news outlets reported Zelenskyy as having delivered the remarks at a press conference in Brussels, the site of a European Council summit the same day.

“We know about 10,000 soldiers of North Korea, that they are preparing to send to fight against us,” he was quoted as saying, adding that he could not speak with certainty about the number of North Korean troops involved.

Zelenskyy explained that Russia had suffered heavy losses on the battlefield and was facing growing opposition to mobilization, adding that this was the reason President Vladimir Putin is seeking outside assistance.

“We have information from our intelligence that [. . .] some officers of the North Korean army are already on Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied by the Russian enemies,” he also said, according to a Reuters report.

Zelenskyy was in Brussels — where the European Council meeting was being held — to explain about his plan for victory in the ongoing war with Russia and call for Western support. In a speech that day, he stressed the need for more Western assistance, reporting signs that China was also actively supporting Russia’s war efforts.

The Ukrainian president has repeatedly sounded the message that North Korean troops are being sent to reinforce Russia since remarks on Oct. 13, where he commented on “a growing alliance between Russia and regimes like North Korea.”

He also said at the time that the cooperation was “no longer a matter of merely delivering weapons” and that it involved “actually sending North Koreans to join the occupying forces.”

Claims of North Korea sending 10,000 troops to support Russia were previously reported Monday by Ukraine’s Kyiv Independent newspaper, which cited accounts from Western sources. The same day, the news outlet Liga.net quoted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) as saying that up to 3,000 North Korean soldiers were to be deployed to a “special Buryat battalion” at the base of Russia’s 11th Separate Air Assault Brigade.

But this marks the first time Zelenskyy has specifically mentioned the number of troops as being “about 10,000.”

By Cho Ki-weon, staff reporter

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