More than 150 Chinese nationals are fighting for Russia in Ukraine, Zelenskyy says

More than 150 Chinese citizens are fighting in Ukraine alongside the Russian army, which is massing on the border of Ukraine ahead of a huge spring offensive, according to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy made the claim that a significant number of Chinese citizens were involved in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on his country late Wednesday in his nightly address.

The Ukrainian leader described the potential involvement of Chinese citizens as a major escalation and called on the United States and other allies for support, adding “this must be met with a firm and principled response.”

If the Chinese government had knowledge of the troops’ deployment, it would make China the second country after North Korea to send military personnel to aid the Kremlin in its three-year-long attempt to annex Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s claims came as his military chief said that a new Russian offensive had begun in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian military chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Russian forces have intensified assaults in “all main directions,” including in the country’s eastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions. 

“This offensive has already begun,” he said according to Ukrainian media. 

Such an offensive would raise questions about the seriousness with which the Kremlin is taking the Trump administration’s efforts to broker peace between Moscow and Kyiv and serve to undermine the sincerity of sending Putin-ally Kirill Dmitriev to Washington this month for diplomatic talks. Dmitriev is the most senior Kremlin official to visit since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Zelenskyy’s fresh allegations come after he said Tuesday that the Ukrainian military had captured two Chinese citizens fighting with the Russian army.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian later said that China was asking citizens to stay away from and not involve themselves in armed conflict.

Lin gave a new statement Thursday, urging relevant parties to refrain from making “irresponsible” remarks and adding that Beijing was not a party to the war and that it supported and had “actively promoted the peaceful settlement of the crisis.”

Zelenskyy said earlier this week that the two Chinese nationals his forces had captured were found in the country’s Donetsk region with personal documents, including bank cards, and that Russian units had “significantly more” than two Chinese citizens. On Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the accusation had “no basis in facts.”

Zelenskyy told reporters on Wednesday that he was ready to exchange the two captured Chinese nationals “only for Ukrainian soldiers” in Russian captivity.

“They are more talkative than the prisoners from North Korea, as far as we can see,” he said, referring to two North Korean soldiers Ukraine captured in January. 

Russia is trying to attract Chinese soldiers through social media platforms, he said, adding that the 155 recruits Ukraine had identified arrived in Moscow after enlistment and spent four days undergoing medical examinations followed by two months in training centers. Zelenskyy did not specify when they had arrived. 

NBC News has not independently verified the Ukrainian figures. A spokesperson for the Kremlin declined to comment when asked about the Chinese soldiers on Wednesday.

The Kremlin’s silence came as the U.K.’s National Crime Agency said that British prosecutors had found that a former-Russia-appointed governor of the annexed Crimean city of Sevastopol, Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, guilty of breaching U.K. government sanctions on Russia — making him the first person convicted of doing so.

South Korea estimates that 11,000 North Korean soldiers have already been deployed to fight alongside Russians, but the difference between the impoverished and secretive nation and the world’s second largest economy being involved in a war against an ally of the U.S. and Europe would be geopolitically seismic.

The Ukrainian air force said Thursday that Russia had launched 145 Iran-made Shahed drones over its territory overnight, with four civilians killed in the past 24 hours. Three civilians were injured in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, and the Sumy region was shelled nearly 300 times over the prior 24 hours.

The Russian military was likely “attempting to form a buffer zone” along Ukraine’s international border in Sumy Oblast, The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based defense think tank said in its Wednesday assessment.