Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday said they captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region, since their recruitment by Russia in the war.
North Korean regular troops entered the Ukraine-Russia War on Russia’s side in October, according to Kyiv and its western allies, who initially estimated their numbers at 10,000 or more.
In a post on X, Zelenskyy said that the soldiers had been brought to Kyiv and were communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
“As with all prisoners of war, these two North Korean soldiers are receiving the necessary medical assistance,” Zelenskyy said.
He said that journalists would be given access to speak to them.
Kyiv says that North Korean troops are fighting in the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion in August. Kyiv says it still controls several hundred square kilometres of territory there.
North Korean Presence
Pyongyang has also been supplying Russia with vast quantities of artillery shells, according to Kyiv and its western allies.
Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Korean troops in Kursk, and there was no immediate reaction from Moscow or Pyongyang to the latest report.
Ukraine had previously said it captured North Korean soldiers in combat, but that they had been badly wounded and died shortly afterwards.
A doctor interviewed for the SBU’s video, who was not named and had his face blurred, said one of the soldiers had a facial wound and would be treated by a dentist, while the other soldier had an open wound and a lower leg fracture.
The SBU said the North Koreans had been transferred to Kyiv for questioning, and that because they could not speak Ukrainian, Russian or English, their questioning was being done in Korean with the help of South Korea’s NIS intelligence agency.
The SBU said one of the soldiers had been captured with a Russian military document with the name of another person registered in Russia, while the other did not have any documents.
The agency said the soldiers had been born in 2005 and 1999, and had been serving in the North Korean armed forces since 2021 and 2016 respectively.
The SBU said the two prisoners were being held in conditions that were in accordance with international law, and that a criminal investigation was being conducted to see if the men broke Ukraine’s law against planning or conducting a war.
(With inputs from Reuters)
