Kiev:
Ukraine said on Saturday that investigators were questioning two wounded North Korean soldiers after they were captured in Russia’s Kursk region. They said they had provided “indisputable evidence” that North Koreans were fighting for Moscow.
It is not the first time that Kiev has claimed the capture of North Korean soldiers during the Kursk raid, but the country has not previously reported being able to raise questions about it.
In December it was said that several prisoners had been taken, but they died of serious wounds.
“Our soldiers have captured North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. These are two soldiers who, although injured, survived and were taken to Kiev, and are talking to SBU investigators,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
The SBU security service provided some details about the interrogation of the men. They said both described themselves as experienced soldiers and one said he was sent to Russia for training, not to fight.
But Ukraine has not provided any evidence that the men are North Korean.
In a video released by the SBU, two men with Asian features are shown in hospital beds, one with bandaged hands and the other with a bandaged jaw. A doctor at the detention center says the second man also has a broken leg.
‘The world needs to know’
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce the Russian army, including in the Kursk border area, where Ukraine carried out a shock raid last August.
Zelensky had 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 capture fighting North Koreans because “Russians and other North Korean soldiers kill their wounded and do everything they can to prevent evidence of the participation of another state, North Korea, in the war against Ukraine”.
He said he would give the POWs access to the media because “the world needs to know what is happening.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on
“We need maximum pressure against the regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang,” he wrote.
The men do not speak Russian or Ukrainian and communication is through Korean interpreters, the SBU said, adding that this was “in coordination” with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
The SBU video does not show the men speaking Korean. AFP reporters in Seoul have contacted NOS for comment.
‘Indisputable evidence’
The SBU said the men’s capture constituted “indisputable evidence of the DPRK’s participation in Russia’s war against our country.”
It showed a Russian army identity card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva region, bordering Mongolia.
The SBU said that one POW carried this military identification card “issued in the name of another person”, while the other had no documents at all.
According to some reports, Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them fake IDs.
The SBU said the man with the Tyvan ID told them he received it in Russia in the fall of 2024 when some North Korean combat units had a “week-long interoperability training” with Russian units.
The man said he believed he was “going for training, not to wage a war against Ukraine,” according to the SBU.
The man said he was a gunman born in 2005 and had been in the North Korean military as of 2021.
The other man wrote replies because of an injured jaw and said he was born in 1999, joined the army in 2016 and was a sniper, the SBU said.
The SBU said the men were captured separately – one on Thursday – by special forces and paratroopers.
They will receive medical care and be held in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law, the SBU said.
Russia’s military said on Saturday it had captured territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, northwest of the Kurakhove logistics hub, which it said it captured on Monday.
The Defense Ministry said troops had “liberated” Shevchenko, a rural settlement about 10 kilometers northwest of Kurakhove.
Shevchenko, a large village, is located west of the reservoir near Kurakhove and “is necessary to control, to protect the city from shelling,” state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
“Now Russian troops can advance further towards the western border of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” the report said.
Russia claims to have annexed the Donetsk region, which it calls the Donetsk People’s Republic, although it does not control the entire region.
Ukraine has not confirmed the loss of Kurakhove, which had a population of around 18,000 before Russia launched its offensive in 2022.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said on Saturday that troops had halted Russia’s offensive actions in the area, including around Kurakhove.
Russia is also close to capturing the vital frontline town of Pokrovsk, north of Kurakhove.
Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on Saturday that one person was killed and another injured in Pokrovsk over the past day.
In the southern region of Zaporizhia, a Russian drone attacked a car in a village near the front line, killing a 47-year-old woman on the spot, 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.)