The capture of the prisoners of war comes soon after Kyiv began pushing a new offensive in the Kursk region.
Ukraine’s forces captured two North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian troops in the Kursk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday.
The capture of the prisoners of war came soon after Kyiv began pushing a new offensive in Kursk, doubling down on its surprise cross-border raid last August, in which Kyiv’s forces overwhelmed Russian border guards and captured towns and villages in the Russian region.
Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin bringing in North Korean troops to fight back, Moscow’s forces have struggled to regain ground.
The two North Korean soldiers are wounded and are receiving « necessary medical assistance, » Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. The men are in the custody of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Kyiv, he said.
The SBU said the prisoners represent « irrefutable evidence of the participation of the DPRK in the Russian war against our state, » in a separate Telegram post.
« The prisoners do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, so communication with them takes place through Korean translators in cooperation » with South Korean officials, the SBU said.
Zelenskyy said in his post that capturing the North Korean troops was not a simple operation. ‘This task was not an easy one: usually Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded and do everything to ensure that no evidence of the participation of another state — North Korea — in the war against Ukraine is preserved, » he said.