Russia has asked North Korea to send an additional 30,000 troops and more ballistic missile launchers to support its war in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday, citing Ukrainian intelligence.
Preparations to receive the new contingent are underway in Russia’s Voronezh region, near the Ukrainian border, Zelensky said in a social media post. North Korea has already sent thousands of soldiers to help Russia repel a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kursk region in 2024, and has supplied artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and other arms since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
The scale of the first deployment was itself unprecedented, the first time Pyongyang had sent combat troops abroad in any meaningful number since the Korean War. A second wave of 30,000 would represent a major escalation of the bilateral military partnership, effectively turning North Korea into a direct manpower reservoir for Russia’s grinding war of attrition.
South Korea’s intelligence service has estimated that roughly 2,000 North Korean troops have already been killed in Ukraine. The figure, while unverifiable, suggests Pyongyang is treating the war as a training rotation as much as a favor to Moscow, a chance to expose its forces to modern combat and refine tactics that could be used on the Korean Peninsula.
Zelensky warned that the arrangement cuts both ways. North Korea is not just supplying bodies to Russia; it is learning from them. “Russia is helping North Korea learn how to wage war, improve its weapons, and gain real combat experience in using them,” he said. “All of this is a threat to everyone in Asia who is within range of North Korean missiles.”
In return for its military aid, North Korea has received cash, military technology, food, and energy commodities, resources that help it weather international sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons program. The two countries signed a military assistance treaty in 2024, and Pyongyang reaffirmed its support during a visit by North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui to Moscow this week.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin expressed “gratitude” for North Korea’s backing in a video released ahead of Choe’s visit. North Korea’s state news agency KCNA said the talks confirmed Pyongyang’s “invariable support for all the internal and external policies of the Russian Federation to eliminate the root cause of the Ukrainian dispute.”
The arrangement is straightforward: Russia needs soldiers it cannot recruit fast enough at home. North Korea needs cash, technology, and combat experience it cannot acquire under sanctions. Both sides are getting what they want, and Ukraine is the training ground.