Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has asserted that Russia is preparing to receive 30,000 additional North Korean soldiers and new ballistic missile launchers, citing intelligence reports on Moscow’s autumn plans. In a video address late on 25 July, Zelensky stated that since June, logistical arrangements have been under way in Russia’s Voronezh region, which borders Ukraine, to accommodate the fresh contingent. According to the Ukrainian leader, the deployment would represent a doubling of Pyongyang’s existing force commitment, following the dispatch of an estimated 20,000 troops to the Kursk region in 2024-2025, with South Korean assessments indicating over 2,000 North Korean fatalities so far.

Viewed from Kyiv, the deepening military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang extends the war’s threat far beyond Ukraine’s borders. Zelensky argued that by enabling North Korea to acquire battlefield experience and refine its weapons systems, Russia is endangering all states within range of North Korean ballistic missiles. Pyongyang, through its state news agency KCNA, has expressed “invariable support” for Russian policies and framed its involvement as upholding international justice and territorial integrity. Moscow has not directly addressed the 30,000-troop claim; earlier this year it confirmed North Korean forces were participating in operations in Kursk, while the Kremlin has signalled that any “freeze” of the conflict is impossible given Ukraine’s position.

The allegation of a substantial troop expansion emerged as Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, sitting alongside Vladimir Putin at a bilateral forum in Omsk, publicly called for the war to be halted. “It is a shame, young people are dying … All this has to be stopped,” Tokayev said, proposing a freeze of the front line and a return to negotiations based on the Istanbul formula. Moscow’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians after Russian-installed authorities in occupied Zaporizhzhia said a drone strike on a holiday camp in Kyrylivka killed 12 people, including five children. Kyiv did not immediately comment on that strike but confirmed Russian attacks killed three in Sumy and caused casualties in southern and eastern Ukraine, while reporting that its own long-range drones hit a military factory in Kirov and a refinery in Tyumen, Siberia.

Diplomatic observers note that Tokayev’s direct appeal—rare for a leader of a Moscow-allied Central Asian state—underscores the growing unease among Russia’s neighbours over the conflict’s duration and widening ripple effects. The war, now in its fifth year, has seen the UN warn of a mounting civilian death toll and has drawn in arms and personnel from North Korea, while Moscow has reciprocated with cash, military technology, and food aid to Pyongyang. With US-led mediation stalled and both sides intensifying long-range strikes, the trajectory remains one of escalation, and no new talks have been scheduled. Zelensky, for his part, warned that Putin is preparing conditions for a wider domestic mobilisation, with Russian enlistments this year already exceeding 221,000, matched by nearly 225,500 casualties—131,000 of them fatal, according to the figures he provided.