Ukrainian forces have captured two North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian troops in the Russian border region of Kursk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday.
He made the comments days after Ukraine began launching new attacks in Kursk to hold on to lands captured in a lightning incursion in August that resulted in the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II.
Moscow’s counterattack left Ukrainian forces stretched and demoralized, killing and wounding thousands and retaking more than 40 percent of the 984 square kilometers (380 square miles) of Kursk that Ukraine had seized.
“Our soldiers captured North Korean soldiers in Kursk. These are two soldiers who, although injured, survived, were taken to kyiv and are communicating” with Ukrainian security services, Zelensky said in a message on the Telegram messaging app.
He shared photos of two men resting on cots in a room with bars on the windows. Both wore bandages, one around their jaw and the other around their hands and wrists.
Zelenskyy said capturing the soldiers alive was “not easy.” He claimed that Russian and North Korean forces fighting in Kursk attempted to conceal the presence of North Korean soldiers, including killing wounded comrades on the battlefield to avoid their capture and interrogation by kyiv.
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Ukraine’s SBU security service provided more information on the two soldiers on Saturday. In a statement, one of them had no documents, while the other carried a Russian military ID card in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.
“The prisoners do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, so communication with them is done through Korean translators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence services,” the statement said.
According to the SBU, one of the soldiers claimed he was told he would go to Russia for training rather than to fight against Ukraine.
The agency said the two men had received medical treatment in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and were being investigated “in cooperation with South Korean intelligence services.”
A senior Ukrainian military official said last month that a few hundred North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk had been killed or wounded in combat.
The official provided the first significant estimate of North Korean losses, coming weeks after Ukraine announced that Pyongyang had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help in its nearly three-year war against its neighbor much smaller.
The White House and Pentagon confirmed last month that North Korean forces were fighting on the front lines, primarily in infantry positions. They are fighting with Russian units and, in some cases, independently around Kursk.
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