BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday he had intelligence reports that North Korea was training 10,000 soldiers to support Russia in its fight against Kyiv.

“They are preparing on their land, 10,000 soldiers, but they didn’t move them already to Ukraine or to Russia,” Zelensky said after meeting North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense ministers.

He made the claim about the 10,000 North Korean soldiers earlier Thursday after meeting European Union (EU) leaders in Brussels — without initially making clear where they were being trained.

Speaking alongside NATO chief Mark Rutte, Zelensky said there were already an unspecified number of “tactical personnel” and “officers” from North Korea in “occupied” Ukrainian territory held by Russia.

Rutte told their press conference that the alliance had “no evidence that North Korean soldiers are involved in the fight, but we do know that North Korea is supporting Russia.”

Western officials said they were treating the reports with caution at this stage.

“We are tracking the possible deployment of North Korean troops to Russia,” one official told reporters.

“North Korea has for quite some time now provided significant artillery munitions to Russia to support the war. And this is a new body of reporting that we’re tracking.”

The official said the reports concerned between 2,000 and 12,000 North Koreans but that — if verified — “it’s probably towards the lower number.”

“In terms of the veracity, it is a little bit too early to tell, to get some ground truth behind actually what is happening here,” the official said.

Zelensky earlier qualified North Korea’s move as “the first step to a world war,” noting that Iran was also backing Russia with “drones and missiles,” a claim that Tehran has repeatedly denied.

He said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “counting” on the North Korean soldiers because he was “afraid of mobilization.”

Zelensky held talks with EU leaders and NATO ministers to press for support for his “victory plan” to end the war against Russia.

Evacuation

Meanwhile, Ukraine on Friday said it was evacuating thousands of people from an embattled northeastern town that Kyiv retook from Russia about six months after Moscow launched its invasion in 2022.

Kupiansk, a key rail hub in the northeastern Kharkiv region, has suffered deadly shelling attacks in recent months as Moscow’s forces get within a few kilometers of the town.

The region’s governor had warned on Tuesday that authorities were no longer able to guarantee electricity and water to residents due to “constant shelling” and ordered all civilians in Kupiansk and three nearby communities to leave.

“In total, about 10,000 people need to be evacuated. The pace of evacuation is increasing every day,” governor Oleg Sinegubov said in a video on his Telegram account published Friday.

Kupiansk was seized by Moscow shortly after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and Ukrainian forces retook it around six months later.

It was home to just under 30,000 people before the war. Repeated Russian artillery strikes have badly damaged many of its buildings and left dozens of civilians dead.