Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said 11,000 North Koreans soldiers have been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region to support Kremlin troops in their effort to oust Ukrainian forces still controlling territory after their surprise invasion last August.

“There are already 11,000 in the Kursk region. We are seeing an increase in the number of North Koreans, but not in the reaction of our partners” in the West, the president of Ukraine said.

The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had said that the US expects North Korean troops to be deployed to the battlefields in Ukraine.

“We have not yet seen these troops deploy to the battlefields against Ukrainian forces, but we anticipate that this will potentially happen in the coming days,” Blinken said.