President Zelensky said North Korea and Russia had decided on a 30,000-to-50,000-troop deployment, a figure resting on his own account. Japanese commenters mocked Russia's 'war crime' complaint over a Ukrainian drone strike and weighed the risk of the war rebounding on Asia.
In his July 25 address, President Zelenskyy warned that Russia is preparing to receive an additional 30,000 North Korean soldiers, with arrangements under way in Voronezh Oblast since June and further ballistic missile launcher transfers also in preparation. Japanese commenters treated the soldiers' survival odds as a matter of arithmetic and focused on what drone tactics and weapons knowledge Pyongyang would retain. Sympathy came at a distance, framed as an accident of where one was born.