“These are two soldiers who, although injured, survived and were transported to kyiv where they are speaking with investigators from the SBU,” the Ukrainian security services, Mr. Zelensky said on Telegram. “It was not an easy task: usually, the Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded and do everything to erase evidence of the participation of another state, North Korea, in the war against ‘Ukraine,” he continued.
According to kyiv, 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in the Russian region of Kursk, of which the Ukrainian army has occupied several hundred square kilometers since August. Neither Russia nor North Korea have confirmed the presence of this contingent.
On Saturday, Mr. Zelensky accompanied his announcement with photos of the two suspected soldiers in custody. One of them has visible bandages around his hands, the other around his jaw. According to the leader, the prisoners receive “all necessary medical assistance.” He said he had ordered the SBU to provide press access to detainees: “The world needs to know what is happening,” he said.
War in Ukraine: “the Ukrainians are gradually and systematically ceding ground to the Russians”
Cooperation of South Korean services
In a statement, the SBU said one of the soldiers was captured on Thursday by special forces, and the second by paratroopers.
According to the SBU, the prisoners speak neither English nor Russian, and discussions are conducted in Korean with interpreters in cooperation with the South Korean intelligence services (NIS). According to the SBU, one of the soldiers claimed to be born in 2005, serving in the army since 2021, and said he was thinking of going to Russia to train, not fight.
This soldier was presented by the SBU as carrying, at the time of his capture, Russian military papers with the name of another person living in the republic of Tuva, in Siberia. This Russian region is populated mainly by Tuvans, a Turkic people also present in neighboring Mongolia.
After saying he would resolve the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, Donald Trump revises his estimate upwards
Questioned on this point on Saturday, the press service of the Ukrainian presidency assured that Moscow was distributing false documents to North Korean fighters to conceal their identity. “The Russians are trying to hide the fact that these soldiers are from North Korea and giving them papers saying they are from Tuva or other nations under Moscow’s control,” he said.
According to the SBU, the other soldier had no documents on him. He is said to be a sniper born in 1999, in the army since 2016, and answered some questions in writing because he has an injured jaw.
At the end of December, the spokesperson for the American National Security Council, John Kirby, assured that “more than a thousand” soldiers deployed by Pyongyang in Russia had been killed or injured during assaults in the Kursk region.
Russian advance in the East
The alleged involvement of a foreign army constituted a major escalation in the invasion launched almost three years ago by Vladimir Putin and which is entering a critical phase with the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House.
Mr. Trump, who is due to take office on January 20, said Thursday that he was preparing a meeting with Vladimir Putin to “finish” this conflict. Both camps therefore try, at all costs, to improve or maintain their positions before possible negotiations.
The Russian army claimed on Saturday to have gained ground northwest of the Ukrainian town of Kurakhové, an important stronghold that Moscow said it had conquered earlier this week in the Donetsk region (east).
The Russian Defense Ministry announced that its units had “liberated” the town of Shevchenko, located about 10 kilometers northwest of the center of Kurakhové. The loss of this city, which had around 18,000 inhabitants before the war, has not been officially confirmed by Ukraine.
Russian troops, more numerous and better equipped, advanced slowly but steadily on the front throughout 2024, without however achieving a major breakthrough.
