Kyiv:
Ukraine mentioned Saturday that investigators had been questioning two wounded North Korean troopers after they had been captured in Russia’s Kursk area, saying they supplied “indeniable proof” that North Koreans had been combating for Moscow.
It’s not the primary time that Kyiv has claimed the seize of North Korean troopers throughout its Kursk incursion however it has not reported with the ability to query any earlier than.
In December it mentioned it took a number of captive however they died from severe wounds.
“Our troopers captured North Korean troopers within the Kursk area. These are two troopers who, though wounded, survived and had been delivered to Kyiv, and are speaking to SBU investigators,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
The SBU safety service gave some particulars of the boys’s interrogation, saying each described themselves as skilled troopers and one mentioned he had been despatched to Russia for coaching, to not struggle.
However Ukraine has not supplied any proof that the boys are North Korean.
In video launched by the SBU, two males with Asian options are proven in hospital bunks, one with bandaged arms and the opposite with a bandaged jaw. A health care provider on the detention centre says the second man additionally has a damaged leg.
‘World must know’
Pyongyang has deployed hundreds of troops to strengthen Russia’s navy, together with within the Kursk border area the place Ukraine mounted a shock incursion in August final yr.
Zelensky had mentioned in late December that Ukraine had captured a number of significantly wounded North Korean troopers who later died.
He mentioned Saturday that it was tough to seize North Koreans combating as a result of “Russians and different North Korean troopers end off their wounded and do every little thing to stop proof of the participation of one other state, North Korea, within the warfare in opposition to Ukraine”.
He mentioned he would supply media entry to the prisoners of warfare as a result of “the world must know what is occurring”.
Ukraine’s International Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on X that the “first North Korean prisoners of warfare at the moment are in Kyiv”, calling them “common DPRK troops, not mercenaries”.
“We’d like most stress in opposition to regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang,” he wrote.
The lads don’t communicate Russian or Ukrainian and communication is thru Korean interpreters, the SBU mentioned, including that this was “in cooperation” with South Korea’s Nationwide Intelligence Service.
The SBU video doesn’t present the boys talking Korean. AFP reporters in Seoul have contacted the NIS for remark.
‘Undisputable proof’
The SBU mentioned the boys’s seize supplied “indeniable proof of the DPRK’s participation in Russia’s warfare in opposition to our nation”.
It confirmed a Russian military ID card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva area bordering Mongolia.
The SBU mentioned that one POW carried this navy ID card “issued within the title of one other individual” whereas the opposite had no paperwork in any respect.
Some stories have mentioned Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them faux IDs.
The SBU mentioned the person with the Tyvan ID had advised them he was given it in Russia in autumn 2024 when some North Korean fight models had “one-week interoperability coaching” with Russian models.
The person mentioned he believed he was “going for coaching, to not struggle a warfare in opposition to Ukraine”, the SBU mentioned.
The person mentioned he was a rifleman born in 2005 and had been within the North Korean military since 2021.
The opposite man wrote solutions due to an injured jaw, saying he was born in 1999, joined the military in 2016 and was a scout sniper, the SBU mentioned.
The SBU mentioned the boys had been captured individually — one on Thursday — by particular forces and paratroopers.
They’re being supplied with medical care and “held in applicable circumstances that meet the necessities of worldwide legislation”, the SBU mentioned.
Russia’s military mentioned Saturday that it had gained territory in Ukraine’s jap Donetsk area northwest of the logistics hub of Kurakhove, which it claimed to have captured Monday.
The defence ministry mentioned troops had “liberated” Shevchenko, a rural settlement about 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Kurakhove.
Shevchenko, a big village, is positioned west of the reservoir close to Kurakhove and “is critical to take below management, to guard the city from shelling”, the RIA Novosti state information company reported.
“Now Russian troops can transfer additional in the direction of the western border of the Donetsk Individuals’s Republic,” it mentioned.
Russia claims to have annexed the Donetsk area, which it refers to because the Donetsk Individuals’s Republic, although it doesn’t management the entire area.
Ukraine has not confirmed the lack of Kurakhove, which had round 18,000 inhabitants earlier than Russia launched its 2022 offensive.
The Ukrainian navy’s Common Employees mentioned Saturday that troops had stopped Russia’s offensive actions within the space, together with round Kurakhove.
Russia can be transferring near taking the important frontline metropolis of Pokrovsk north of Kurakhove.
Donetsk’s regional governor Vadym Filashkin mentioned Saturday that one individual had been killed and one other wounded in Pokrovsk during the last day.
Within the southern Zaporizhzhia area, a Russian drone attacked a automotive in a village close to the entrance line, killing a 47-year-old lady on the spot, its governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)