Russia hopes to bring in an additional 30,000 North Korean troops to help fight in Moscow’s war against Kyiv, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said — in a potentially dramatic expansion of Pyongyang’s role in the conflict.

North Korea is thought to have sent around 20,000 combat troops and military engineers to Russia’s Kursk region in 2024 to beat back an incursion by Ukrainian forces, with an estimated 14,000 currently deployed on the front lines.

“Russia wants to receive another 30,000 troops from North Korea. Since June, preparations have been under way in Russia’s Voronezh region to receive them,” Zelenskyy said in a nightly address on Saturday without offering a source for this information.