Two wounded North Korean soldiers have been captured as prisoners of war by Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
The two men are receiving “necessary medical assistance” and are in the custody of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Kyiv, according to Zelensky.
The president said he was “grateful” to Ukrainian paratroopers and soldiers from the Special Operation Forces for capturing the North Koreans.
He added that “this was not an easy task”, claiming that Russian and North Korean soldiers usually execute wounded North Koreans “to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine”.
The Ukrainian intelligence service said in a statement that the prisoners were captured on 9 January and immediately after were “provided with all the necessary medical care as stipulated by the Geneva Convention” and taken to Kyiv.
“They are being held in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law,” the intelligence service’s statement read.
The intelligence service said the prisoners do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, “so communication with them is carried out through interpreters of Korean, in cooperation with South Korean NIS (National Intelligence Service)”.
In a statement posted on Telegram and X, Zelensky said the soldiers were “talking to SBU investigators” and he had instructed the Security Service of Ukraine to grant journalists access to them.
“The world needs to know the truth about what is happening,” he added.
Zelensky also posted four photographs alongside his statement. Two show wounded men. One of the photos showed a red Russian military card.
The place of birth on the document is given as Turan, in the Tuva Republic, which is close to Mongolia.
The intelligence service said that when the prisoners were captured, one of the soldiers had a Russian military ID card issued in the name of another person with registration in the Tuva Republic. The other had no documents at all.
The intelligence service said that during interrogation, the soldier with the ID card told security personnel that he had been issued the document in Russia during the autumn of 2024.
He is alleged to have stated that at that time, some of North Korea’s combat units had one-week interoperability training.
“It is noteworthy that the prisoner…emphasises that he was allegedly going for training, not to fight a war against Ukraine,” the SBU statement said.
The intelligence service reported that he said he was born in 2005 and had been serving North Korea as a rifleman since 2021.
The second prisoner is reported to have given some of his answers in writing because he had an injured jaw, according to SBU. The intelligence service said it believed he was born in 1999 and had been serving North Korea as a scout sniper since 2016.
The Geneva Convention states that the questioning of prisoners should be carried out in a language they understand and prisoners must be protected against public curiosity.
Zelensky’s office said in a statement that the Russians “are trying to hide the fact that these are soldiers from North Korea by giving them documents claiming they are from Tuva or other territories under Moscow’s control”.
“But these people are actually Koreans, they are from North Korea,” the statement from the president’s office said.
In 2014, Russian forces operating in Ukraine – despite Kremlin denials – were sent without identifying markings on their uniforms.
Last year, when President Vladimir Putin was asked about Russia using North Korean troops in its war on Ukraine, he did not deny it. He said it was Russia’s “sovereign decision”.
In December, South Korea’s intelligence agency reported that a North Korean soldier believed to have been the first to be captured while supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine had died after being taken alive by Ukrainian forces.
Separately, the White House said North Korean forces were experiencing mass casualties.
The Security Service of Ukraine said it “is currently conducting the necessary investigative measures to establish all the circumstances of the DPRK military’s participation in Russia’s war against Ukraine”.
“The investigation is being conducted under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor General’s Office under Article 437 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (planning, preparation, unleashing and waging an aggressive war).”
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