BRUSSELS >> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday his country has intelligence information that 10,000 troops from North Korea are being prepared to join Russian forces fighting against his country, warning that a third nation wading into the hostilities would turn the conflict into a “world war.”

Zelenskyy did not go into further details about the claim that came a day after U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said in Seoul that Washington and its allies are alarmed by North Korea’s military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine but couldn’t confirm Ukrainian claims that North Korean soldiers were sent to fight for Moscow.

“We know about 10,000 soldiers of North Korea that they are preparing to send (to) fight against us,” Zelenskyy said, calling any North Korean involvement “the first step to a world war.”

His comments raised the stakes for his Western allies as he met with European Union leaders and then NATO defense ministers to discuss his “ victory plan “ to end the country’s war with Russia.

“If we start now and follow the victory plan, we can end this war no later than next year,” he told the EU leaders.

He told reporters the plan aims “to strengthen Ukraine” and pave the way for a diplomatic solution to end the conflict on Europe’s eastern flank.

“This plan doesn’t depend on Russian will, only on the will of our partners,” he said before addressing leaders at an EU summit.

Zelenskyy was later shuttling across Brussels to meet with NATO defense ministers. The EU is a key supporter of Ukraine, a candidate member of the 27-nation bloc, as it fights Russia’s invasion that began more than 2 1/2 years ago.

Zelenskyy outlined the five-point plan to Ukraine’s parliament on Wednesday without disclosing confidential elements that have been presented in private to key allies, including the United States.

Major points of the plan include an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO and permission to use Western-supplied longer-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia, steps that have been met with reluctance by Kyiv’s allies so far.

“If we get this sign that we will be in NATO, we will feel that we are not alone,” Zelenskyy said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, widely seen as having the warmest relations of any EU leader with Russian President Vladimir Putin, called Zelenskyy’s plan “more than frightening” in a Facebook post and said he would urge major EU powers France and Germany to “begin negotiations with the Russians as soon as possible, in order to find a way out of this situation.”

The Institute for the Study of War in Washington said that Putin is seeking to draw out the war and he believes “that Russian forces can outlast Western support for Ukraine and collapse Ukrainian resistance by winning a war of attrition.”