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January 12, 2025 | 12:45 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Ukraine has captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025. It is the first time Ukraine has announced the capture of North Korean soldiers alive since it entered the war last fall, Reuters reported.
North Korean regular troops entered the war on Russia’s side in October, according to Kyiv and its Western allies, who initially estimated their numbers at 10,000 or more.
In a post on X, Zelensky said the two soldiers had been brought to Kyiv and were in contact with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
“Like all prisoners of war, these two North Korean soldiers are receiving the necessary medical assistance,” Zelensky said. He said journalists would be given access to speak to them.
Kyiv has said North Korean troops are fighting in the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an offensive in August. Kyiv says North Korea still controls several hundred square kilometers of territory there.
Pyongyang has also supplied Russia with large quantities of artillery shells, according to Kyiv and its Western allies.
Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Korean troops in Kursk, and there was no immediate reaction from Moscow or Pyongyang to the latest reports.
Ukraine has previously said it captured North Korean soldiers in combat, but they were seriously wounded and died shortly afterwards.
Special forces operation
Zelensky said in a video address later that the troops had been captured by Ukrainian special forces working alongside paratroopers.
The special forces posted a video taken by a drone that it said showed part of the operation. It showed five men in ghillie suits in a wooded area, although other details were hard to make out.
A video posted by the SBU appeared to show the two captured men. One of them had his jaw bandaged from an apparent wound, while the other was drinking through a straw.
A doctor interviewed for the SBU video, whose name was not given and whose face was blurred, said that one of the soldiers had a facial wound and would be treated by a dentist, while the other soldier had an open wound and a fractured lower leg.
The SBU said that the North Koreans had been transferred to Kyiv for questioning, and because they could not speak Ukrainian, Russian or English, the interrogation was being conducted in Korean with the help of South Korea’s NIS intelligence agency.
The SBU said that one of the soldiers had been arrested with Russian military documents in the name of another person registered in Russia, while the other had no documents whatsoever.
The agency said that the soldiers were born in 2005 and 1999, and had served in the North Korean armed forces between 20021 and 2016.
The SBU said that the two detainees were being held in conditions consistent with international law, and that a criminal investigation was underway into whether the men had violated Ukrainian law prohibiting the planning or conduct of war.
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