Ukraine said on Saturday that investigators were questioning two wounded North Korean soldiers after their capture in Russia’s Kursk region, saying they provided “indisputable evidence” that the North Koreans were fighting for Moscow.
This is not the first time Kiev has claimed to have captured North Korean soldiers during the Kursk incursion, but it has not reported being able to interrogate anyone before.
In December it said it took several people captive but they died of serious wounds.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media, “Our troops captured North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. These are two soldiers who, despite being injured, survived and were brought to Kiev, and they are talking to SBU investigators. Are.”
The SBU security service provided few details of the interrogation of the men, saying that both described themselves as experienced soldiers and one said he had been sent to Russia for training, not to fight.
But Ukraine has not provided any evidence that these people are North Koreans.
Video released by the SBU shows two men with Asian features in hospital cots, one with his hands bandaged and the other with his jaw bandaged. A doctor at the detention center says the other man also has a broken leg.
‘The world needs to know’
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s military, including in the Kursk border area, where Ukraine made a surprise incursion in August last year.
Zelensky said in late December that Ukraine had captured several seriously wounded North Korean soldiers who later died.
He said Saturday that it is difficult to catch North Koreans fighting because “Russians and other North Korean troops slaughter their wounded and do everything to prevent evidence of the involvement of another state, North Korea, in the war against Ukraine.” We do”.
He said he would provide media access to the POWs because “the world needs to know what is happening”.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga wrote on Twitter that “the first North Korean prisoners of war are now in Kiev”, calling them “regular DPRK soldiers, not mercenaries”.
“We need maximum pressure against the regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang,” he wrote.
The men do not speak Russian or Ukrainian and communications take place through Korean interpreters, the SBU said, adding that it was “in cooperation” with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
The men in the SBU video are not shown speaking Korean. AFP correspondents in Seoul have contacted the NIS for comment.
‘Undisputed evidence’
The SBU said the men’s capture provided “indisputable evidence of the DPRK’s involvement in Russia’s war against our country.”
It showed a Russian military ID card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva region bordering Mongolia.
The SBU said one POW had a military ID card “issued in the name of another person”, while the other had no documents.
Some reports say that Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them fake IDs.
The SBU said the man with the Taywon ID had told them he was given it in Russia in autumn 2024 when some North Korean combat units underwent “a week of interoperability training” with Russian units.
The man said he believed he was going “for training, not to fight a war against Ukraine,” the SBU said.
The man said he was a rifleman born in 2005 and had been in the North Korean army since 2021.
The SBU said the second man, writing a reply due to an injured jaw, said he was born in 1999, joined the army in 2016 and was a scout sniper.
The SBU said the people were captured separately by special forces and paratroopers – on Thursday.
They are being provided medical care and “are being kept in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law”, the SBU said.
Russia’s military said Saturday it had secured territory northwest of the logistics hub of Kurakhov in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which it claimed to have captured on Monday.
The Defense Ministry said troops had “liberated” Shevchenko, a rural settlement about 10 kilometers (six miles) northwest of Kurakhov.
RIA Novosti state news agency reported that Shevchenko, a large village, is located west of the reservoir near Kurakhov and “it is necessary to take control of it in order to protect the town from shelling”.
“Now Russian troops can advance towards the western border of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” it said.
Russia claims to have annexed the Donetsk region, which it refers to as the Donetsk People’s Republic, although it does not control the entire region.
Ukraine has not confirmed the loss of Kurakhov, which had about 18,000 residents before Russia launched the invasion in 2022.
The Ukrainian Army General Staff said on Saturday that troops had stopped Russian offensive actions in the area, including Kurakhov.
Russia is also moving closer to capturing the important border town of Pokrovsk, north of Kurakhov.
Donetsk regional governor Vadim Fylashkin said on Saturday that one person was killed and another was injured in Pokrovsk the previous day.
In the southern Zaporizhia region, a Russian drone struck a car in a village near the front line, killing a 47-year-old woman on the spot, its governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
