Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday, September 28, that more than 8,000 North Korean troops are currently on Russian territory and that preparations are underway to deploy another 10,000 — a significant expansion of Pyongyang's direct involvement in Russia's war against Ukraine.
Citing "new data" on the deployment, Zelenskyy said in a post on X that the additional North Korean troops were "being selected for training and subsequent deployment to Russia." If confirmed, the new wave would represent one of the largest expansions of North Korea's military footprint abroad in the country's history — and a further internationalization of a war now deep into its fourth year.
The scale of North Korea's involvement
North Korea has sent an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 troops to support Russia's war in Ukraine since 2024, according to Ukrainian and South Korean estimates, with most deployed in the Kursk region to help repel a Ukrainian incursion. Pyongyang has also supplied Russia with millions of artillery and mortar rounds, as well as ballistic missiles, long-range artillery systems and multiple-launch rocket systems, according to Ukrainian and independent assessments.
Zelenskyy had warned in August that up to 50,000 North Korean soldiers could eventually be sent to fight for Russia — a figure that would make North Korea one of the largest foreign contributors of manpower to the war. The September announcement of 8,000 troops already in place and 10,000 more in preparation suggests that trajectory is continuing.
The announcement comes as fighting shows no sign of abating. Reuters witnesses reported explosions in Kyiv early on September 29, with missile debris falling in a residential courtyard and a non-residential building catching fire. On Monday, Zelenskyy said Russian drone attacks had killed nine people and injured more than 80 across Ukraine. Russia has also ordered an increase in the authorized size of its armed forces, according to reporting on a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.
A friction point between Kyiv and Seoul
Zelenskyy's comments landed amid a public disagreement between Ukraine and South Korea. Last week, Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine had transferred two captured North Korean soldiers to South Korea. Seoul expressed regret over the announcement, citing an agreement to keep the transfer confidential, and protested what it called a false statement from the Ukrainian presidential office denying that such a confidentiality agreement existed.
The episode underscored the sensitivity of the North Korean prisoner question — and the balancing act Seoul faces. South Korea announced in July a $100 million aid package for Ukraine, although it explicitly excluded lethal weapons. Zelenskyy has repeatedly called on South Korea to provide support for Ukraine's air defense, a request that remains unresolved as Seoul weighs the risks of provoking Pyongyang.
South Korea's interest in the conflict is both humanitarian and strategic. Every North Korean soldier who fights in Ukraine gains combat experience — and every Russian payment in return, whether in cash, energy, or technology, strengthens the regime in Pyongyang. Seoul's military planners are watching closely for any signs that Russia is sharing advanced military technology with North Korea as compensation.
The Korean Peninsula itself is heating up
The troop announcement came days after a separate incident on the peninsula itself. South Korea said North Korean land mines were highly likely responsible for explosions that injured three South Korean soldiers inside South Korean territory near the Demilitarized Zone. The assessment came from a joint investigation involving the United Nations Command; North Korea has not publicly responded.
Whether the mining incident is connected to the broader escalation is unclear, but it adds to a pattern of rising tension. Taken together — land mines at the DMZ, a troop pipeline to Russia, and a deepening Moscow–Pyongyang military partnership — the picture is of a North Korea that is more willing than at any point in recent decades to project force beyond its borders.
The Moscow–Pyongyang bargain
The troop deployments are the visible tip of a broader bargain. Since 2024, North Korea and Russia have deepened what both governments describe as a comprehensive partnership: Pyongyang provides artillery shells, missiles, and manpower; Moscow provides diplomatic cover, economic lifelines, and — Western officials fear — technology transfers that could advance North Korea's missile, submarine, and satellite programs. United Nations sanctions technically prohibit such cooperation, but enforcement has been hollowed out by Russian obstruction at the Security Council and increasingly sophisticated evasion networks.
For North Korea, the arrangement solves a cash problem and a credibility problem at once. A country whose economy has been strangled by sanctions for decades now has a major-power customer for its conventional munitions and a combat laboratory for its army. The estimated 14,000 to 15,000 troops already sent represent an investment in battlefield knowledge that Pyongyang's isolated military could obtain no other way — intelligence that directly affects the security calculations of South Korea, Japan, and the United States.
For Russia, North Korean troops and munitions offer a way to sustain the war's grinding tempo without the domestic political cost of broader mobilization at home. The reported decree expanding the authorized size of Russia's armed forces shows the manpower hunger is real; North Korean formations, whatever their battlefield performance, help feed it.
What the deployments mean for the war
Military analysts have debated how much difference North Korean troops actually make on the battlefield. Their initial deployments in the Kursk region reportedly suffered heavy casualties as they adapted to modern warfare, drones, and unfamiliar terrain. But quantity has a quality of its own: in a war of attrition, fresh manpower allows Russia to sustain offensive operations while preserving its own mobilization reserves.
The deployments also carry diplomatic significance. North Korean participation has been cited by Western governments as evidence of Russia's dependence on outside help — and as a reason to tighten sanctions enforcement and interdiction of arms shipments between the two countries. For Ukraine, each announcement of new North Korean deployments is leverage in the ongoing campaign for more air defense systems and long-range weapons from Western partners.
The question now is whether the international response can keep pace with the escalation. Sanctions regimes are only as strong as their enforcement, and Russia and North Korea have spent two years demonstrating how porous those regimes can be. Until that changes, the troop trains are likely to keep rolling west.
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