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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine has captured two soldiers from North Korea.
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Zelenskyy said the two soldiers were wounded and taken to Kyiv.
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South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has confirmed the capture.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine has captured two wounded North Korean soldiers.
In a statement posted on X on Saturday, Zelenskyy said the soldiers were captured in Russia's Kursk region and taken to Kyiv, where they were now “in contact with the Security Service of the Ukraine. He said they were getting the “medical support that was needed.”
Zelenskyy also shared images of two wounded men, but did not provide evidence that they were North Korean.
“This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other military personnel in North Korea usually act on their wounds to eliminate any evidence that North Korea was involved in the war against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said, adding that he had instructed the Ukrainian security service to give journalists access to the captured soldiers.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has confirmed the capture.
The NIS told AFP that it had “confirmed that the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers on January 9 at the Kursk battlefield in Russia”.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has also shared some information about their interrogation of the couple.
The SBU said that the North Korean soldiers did not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, “so communication with them is done through Korean interpreters,” with the help of the NIS.
The SBU said one soldier told interrogators he believed he had been sent out for training, not to fight in the war against Ukraine.
He said one of the soldiers was found with a Russian military ID card “issued in another person's name,” while the other had no documents with him.
The soldier with the ID card said he was born in 2005 and had been a rifleman in the North Korean army since 2021.
The other man was born in 1999 and had been a scout sniper in the North Korean army since 2016, the SBU said, citing “preliminary information”.
Pyongyang reportedly began sending troops to Russia in October.
White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said last month Russia was using North Korean troops to carry out “human wave” attacks on Ukrainian positions, resulting in heavy casualties.
“It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them for hopeless attacks against Ukrainian defenses,” Kirby said. North Korean soldiers are very indoctrinated, pushing attacks even when it is clear that these attacks are futile.”
Zelenskyy said last month that preliminary estimates suggested that more than 3,000 Pyongyang soldiers had been killed or wounded in Kursk.
He previously said that Russian forces had been trying to “literally burn the faces of North Korean soldiers killed in battle” in an attempt to “hide their defeat”.
In December, a A North Korean soldier is believed to be the first to be captured by Ukrainian forces he died from his injuries, South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) said, according to the Yonhap news agency.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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