North Korean soldier captured by Ukraine Photograph: (@ZelenskyyUa/X)
WION NEWS | Published January 11, 2025
Ukraine has shared the first evidence of North Korean soldiers captured while fighting for Russia in the Kursk region, calling it a “undeniable” proof of North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the country’s counterintelligence agency on Saturday announced that two injured North Korean soldiers had been taken into custody. The soldiers were transported to Kyiv for medical treatment and questioning.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) released a video showing the two captives. According to the SBU, one of the soldiers was captured on 9 January by Ukrainian special forces, while the other was detained by paratroopers.
“They are being held in conditions that comply with international law,” said an SBU spokesman.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) assisting Ukrainian authorities in communicating with North Korean soldiers
The video shows the two men lying on bunk beds in a cell. One appears to have a jaw injury, while the other is reported to have a fractured leg.
The SBU said that the soldiers do not speak English, Ukrainian, or Russian. Thus, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) is assisting Ukrainian authorities in communicating with them.
One soldier, born in 1999, has been serving as a sniper-reconnaissance officer since 2016. Due to his jaw injury, he had to write down his testimony.
N Korean soldiers reveal they received only a week of training with Russian forces before deployment
The security service also said that one of the men was carrying a Russian military ID card under the name of another individual from Tuva, Russia. According to the soldier’s statement, he received the document in Russia in the autumn of 2024. The soldier claimed that some North Korean units had undergone only a week of training with Russian forces before deployment.
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SOURCE: www.wionews.com
RELATED: Ukraine questioning two captured North Korean soldiers
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives for a meeting in Rome on Friday (UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE / VIA AFP JIJI
Published January 11, 2025
Kyiv – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that investigators were questioning two wounded North Korean soldiers after they were captured in Russia’s Kursk region.
“Our soldiers captured North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. These are two soldiers who, although wounded, survived and were brought to Kyiv, and are talking to SBU investigators,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media, referring to Ukraine’s SBU security service.
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s military, including in the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock incursion in August last year.
Zelenskyy had said in late December that Ukraine had captured several seriously wounded North Korean soldiers who later died.
He said Saturday that it was difficult to capture North Koreans fighting because “Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded and do everything to prevent evidence of the participation of another state, North Korea, in the war against Ukraine.”
He said he would provide media access to the prisoners of war because “the world needs to know what is happening.”
He also posted photos of two wounded men with Asian features in bunk beds but did not provide evidence that they were North Korean.
One photo shows a Russian army ID card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva region bordering Mongolia.
Some reports have said Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them fake IDs.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on X that the “first North Korean prisoners of war are now in Kyiv,” calling them “regular DPRK troops, not mercenaries.”
“We need maximum pressure against regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang,” he wrote.
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SOURCE: www.japantimes.co.jp
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