Ukraine’s forces have captured two North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday, the first such claim by Kyiv since North Korea sent thousands of troops to shore up Moscow's war effort on the other side of the world.
Zelenskyy made the comments days after Ukraine, facing a slow Russian onslaught in the east, began pressing new attacks in Kursk to retain ground captured in a lightning incursion in August — the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II.
Moscow’s counterattack has left Ukrainian forces outstretched and demoralized, killing and wounding thousands and retaking more than 40% of the 984 square kilometers (380 square miles) of Kursk Ukraine had seized.
“Our soldiers have captured North Korean soldiers in Kursk. These are two soldiers who, although wounded, survived, were taken to Kyiv, and are communicating” with Ukrainian security services, Zelenskyy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
He shared photos of two men resting on cots in a room with bars over the windows. Both wore bandages, one around his jaw and the other around both hands and wrists.
Zelenskyy said capturing the soldiers alive was “not easy.” He asserted that Russian and North Korean forces fighting in Kursk have tried to conceal the presence of North Korean soldiers, including by killing wounded comrades on the battlefield to avoid their capture and interrogation by Kyiv.
Ukraine's security service SBU on Saturday said one of the soldiers had no documents at all, while the other had been carrying a Russian military ID card in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.
According to the SBU, one of the soldiers claimed he had been told he was going to Russia for training, rather than to fight against Ukraine. He said his combat unit, made up of North Koreans, only received one week of training alongside Russian troops before being sent to the front.
A senior Ukrainian military official said last month that a couple hundred North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk have been killed or wounded in battle.
Ukraine estimates that 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia. The White House and Pentagon said the North Korean forces have been battling on the front lines in largely infantry positions. They have been fighting with Russian units and, in some cases, independently around Kursk.
Its full-scale invasion three years ago left Russia holding a fifth of Ukraine, and Zelenskyy has hinted that he hopes controlling Kursk will help force Moscow to negotiate an end to the war. But multiple Ukrainian and Western officials in Kyiv last month told The Associated Press that they fear gambling on Kursk will weaken the whole 1000-kilometer (621-mile) front line, and Ukraine is losing precious ground in the east.
