North Korea's Kim Yo Jong denies Zelenskiy's claim on additional troops deployment
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Kim Yo Jong denied Zelenskiy's claim that North Korea plans to send up to 50,000 additional troops to Russia, calling the estimate 'groundless' and 'a self-staged incident' in a KCNA statement on Wednesday
- Kim Yo Jong placed responsibility for the outbreak and prolongation of the Ukraine crisis entirely on the United States and the West
- North Korea previously sent an estimated 14,000 soldiers to Russia's Kursk Region in 2024 under a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty agreed during Putin's June 2024 visit to Pyongyang
- Pyongyang has also supplied Russia with millions of artillery and mortar rounds, ballistic missiles, long-range artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, per Ukrainian and independent assessments
- Kim Yo Jong said the US 'hostile policy' toward North Korea hasn't changed despite Trump's order to reduce US participation in joint military drills with South Korea
- Trump said Monday he received a response from Kim Jong Un after scaling back US drills with Seoul — directly contradicted by Kim Yo Jong, who said she was unaware of any recent communications between the two countries' leaders
Why it matters: The denial leaves a factual gap between Kyiv's troop estimate and Pyongyang's official position that neither side can immediately resolve, while the contradiction with Trump's claim of recent Kim communications exposes the gap between White House diplomatic signaling and North Korea's public posture. For South Korea, already weighing air defense support for Ukraine per Zelenskiy's appeal, Kim Yo Jong's statement removes any ambiguity about which side Pyongyang sits on.
Ask SkimNews
