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Ukraine said on Saturday that investigators are questioning two wounded North Korean soldiers after they were captured in Russia’s Kursk region, saying they had provided “incontrovertible evidence” that North Korea was working for Moscow. were fighting

This is not the first time Kiev has claimed to have captured North Korean soldiers during his Kursk incursion, but he has not previously reported being able to interrogate anyone.

In December he said he took several prisoners but died of severe wounds.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media, “Our troops captured North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. These are two soldiers, who survived with injuries and were brought to Kyiv, and are being investigated by the SBU.” Talking to cars,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

The SBU security service gave some details of the questioning of the men, saying that both described themselves as veteran soldiers and one said he had been sent to Russia to train, not to fight.

But Ukraine has not provided any evidence that the men are from North Korea.

In the video released by the SBU, two men with Asian features are shown in hospital beds, one with a bandage on his hand and the other with a bandage on his jaw. A doctor at the detention center says that the other man also has a broken leg.

‘The world needs to know’

Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to bolster Russia’s military, including in the border region of Kursk, where Ukraine launched a major offensive in August last year.

Zelensky said in late December that Ukraine had captured several seriously wounded North Korean soldiers who later died.

He said on Saturday that North Korean fighters are difficult to capture because “Russian and other North Korean troops eliminate their wounded and to prevent evidence of another state’s involvement in the war against Ukraine, North Korea.” We try our best.”

He said he would give media access to POWs because “the world needs to know what’s going on”.

“North Korea’s first POWs are now in Kiev,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibyga wrote on X, calling them “regular DPRK soldiers, not mercenaries.”

“We need maximum pressure against the regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang,” he wrote.

The SBU said the men did not speak Russian or Ukrainian and the talks were conducted through Korean interpreters, adding that it was “in cooperation” with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

The SBU video does not show the men speaking Korean. AFP correspondents in Seoul have contacted the NIS for comment.

‘Irrefutable Evidence’

The SBU said the arrest of the men provided “irrefutable evidence of the DPRK’s participation in Russia’s war against our country.”

It showed a Russian army ID card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Teva region, bordering Mongolia.

The SBU said one POW had this military ID card “issued in the name of another person” while the other had no documents.

Some reports say that Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them fake IDs.

The SBU said the person with the Taiwanese ID told them it was issued in Russia in fall 2024 when North Korea Some combat units received “a week of interoperability training” with Russian units.

The SBU said the man said he believed he was going to train and not fight a war against Ukraine.

The man said he was a rifleman born in 2005 and had been in the North Korean army since 2021.

The SBU said the second man wrote the answers because of an injured jaw, that he was born in 1999, joined the army in 2016 and was a scout sniper.

The SBU said the men were caught separately — one on Thursday — by special forces and paratroopers.

The SBU said they were being provided with medical care and “held in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law”.

Russia’s military said on Saturday it had captured territory northwest of the logistics hub of Korakhov in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which it claimed to have captured on Monday.

The defense ministry said troops had “liberated” Shevchenko, a rural settlement about 10 kilometers (six miles) northwest of Korakhov.

Shevchenko, a large village, is located west of the reservoir near Kurakhwe and “must be taken under control to protect the city from shelling,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.

“Now Russian troops can advance further towards the western border of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” he said.

Russia claims annexation of the Donetsk region, which it calls the Donetsk People’s Republic, although it does not control the entire region.

Ukraine has not confirmed the loss of Korakhov, which had about 18,000 residents before Russia invaded in 2022.

The Ukrainian Army’s General Staff said on Saturday that troops had stopped Russian offensives in the area, including around Korakhov.

Russia is also getting close to taking the important front-line town of Pokrosk, north of Korakhov.

Vadim Flashkin, the regional governor of Donetsk, said on Saturday that one person was killed and another injured in Pokrosk yesterday.

In the southern Zaporozhye region, a Russian drone struck a car in a village near the front line, killing a 47-year-old woman on the spot, its governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.

(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

(Tags translation)Volodymyr Zelensky



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