KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Ukrainian troops have captured two North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian troops in Russia’s Kursk border region.
His comments came days after Ukraine launched a new attack on Kursk to hold on to territory captured in a lightning invasion in August that led to the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II.
Moscow’s counterattack has stranded and demoralized Ukrainian forces, caused thousands of casualties, and retaken more than 40 percent of the 984 square kilometers (380 square miles) of Ukraine-occupied Kursk region.
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“Our soldiers captured North Korean soldiers in Kursk.” Zelensky posted on the Telegram messaging app that the two soldiers, although injured, survived and were flown to Kiev and are communicating with Ukrainian security services. .
He shared a photo of two men resting on a cot in a room with bars on the windows. Both were wrapped in bandages, one around his jaw and the other around his hands and wrists.
Zelensky said it was “not easy” to capture the soldiers alive. He claimed that Russian and North Korean troops fighting in Kursk tried to conceal the presence of North Korean soldiers, including killing wounded comrades on the battlefield to avoid their capture and interrogation by Kiev.
Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, provided more information about the two soldiers on Saturday. In a statement, one of the men had no documents at all, while the other held a Russian military ID card that named a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia. .
“The prisoners do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, so communications with them are conducted through Korean translators with the cooperation of South Korean intelligence services,” the statement read.
One of the soldiers claimed he was told to go to Russia for training rather than fight against Ukraine, the SBU reported.
The agency said both men received medical care 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 hundreds of North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian troops in Kursk had been killed or wounded in the fighting.
The official provided the first major estimate of North Korean casualties, weeks after Ukraine announced that Pyongyang had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it fight its much smaller neighbor in its nearly three-year war.
The White House and Pentagon confirmed last month that North Korean troops are operating primarily in infantry positions on the front lines. They have been fighting alongside Russian forces and sometimes independently around Kursk.
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