Wounded troopers taken to Kyiv for questioning by Ukrainian investigators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence.
Ukraine says it has captured two North Korean troopers in Russia’s Kursk area and brought them to Kyiv, the place investigators had been questioning them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned the 2 prisoners of warfare had been “speaking” with the Safety Service of Ukraine (SBU), the nation’s home intelligence company.
“Russian forces and different North Korean navy personnel normally execute their wounded to erase any proof of North Korea’s involvement within the warfare,” Zelenskyy wrote on X on Saturday.
Ukraine’s SBU mentioned in a press release that one of many captured troopers had no paperwork in any respect, whereas the opposite had been carrying a Russian navy ID card within the identify of a person from Tuva, a Russian area bordering Mongolia.
“The prisoners don’t converse Ukrainian, English or Russian, so communication with them takes place by means of Korean translators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence,” the assertion mentioned.
In line with the SBU, one of many troopers claimed he had been instructed he was going to Russia for coaching, relatively than to battle in opposition to Ukraine.
The company mentioned each males had been supplied with medical care according to the Geneva Conventions.
Ukraine didn’t present proof that the captured troopers had been from North Korea.
Kyiv has repeatedly mentioned North Korean troops are combating within the Kursk area, the place it launched an incursion in August, claiming management over a number of hundred sq. kilometres of territory.
Nonetheless, that is the primary time that the nation’s intelligence providers mentioned they’ve had the chance to query North Korean troopers. Whereas Ukraine had beforehand claimed to have captured North Korean troopers in fight, it mentioned they’d been badly wounded and died shortly afterwards.
Final month, a senior Ukrainian navy official claimed that some 200 North Korean troopers combating alongside Russian forces in Kursk had been killed or wounded in battle.
The estimate of North Korean casualties got here weeks after Ukraine introduced that Pyongyang had despatched 10,000 to 12,000 troopers to Russia to assist it in its virtually three-year warfare in opposition to its a lot smaller neighbour.
The White Home and Pentagon final month confirmed that the North Korean forces have been battling on the entrance strains in largely infantry positions.
