Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that investigators were questioning two wounded North Korean soldiers after they were captured in Russia’s Kursk region.
“Our soldiers captured North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. These are two soldiers who, although wounded, survived and were brought to Kyiv, and are talking to SBU investigators,” Zelensky wrote on social media, referring to Ukraine’s SBU security service.
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s military, including in the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock incursion in August last year.
Zelensky had said in late December that Ukraine had captured several seriously wounded North Korean soldiers who later died.
He said Saturday that it was difficult to capture North Koreans fighting because “Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded and do everything to prevent evidence of the participation of another state, North Korea, in the war against Ukraine.”
He said he would provide media access to the prisoners of war because “the world needs to know what is happening.”
He also posted photos of two wounded men with Asian features in bunk beds but did not provide evidence that they were North Korean.
One photo shows a Russian army ID card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva region bordering Mongolia.
Some reports have said Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them fake IDs.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on X that the “first North Korean prisoners of war are now in Kyiv,” calling them “regular DPRK troops, not mercenaries.”
“We need maximum pressure against regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang,” he wrote.
