A South Korean lawmaker says approximately 15-hundred additional troops dispatched by North Korea for Russia’s war against Ukraine appear to have already been deployed to the battlefield.

Rep. Yu Yong-weon from the ruling People Power Party, who recently visited Ukraine, made the claim Wednesday, citing the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. 

North Korea, which sent about eleven-thousand troops to Russia in October, dispatched additional troops around January or February. 

The lawmaker told a radio show that he heard from the Ukrainian government that North Korea was dispatching additional troops to supplement the Russian forces, and that another group of troops is preparing for deployment to the battlefield.

Yu said South Korea’s spy agency estimates that North Korean troops have suffered 36-hundred casualties, while the Ukrainian defense intelligence authorities put the number at about four thousand, including about four hundred deaths.