Ukraine captures first North Korean soldiers, Zelensky says

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his military has captured two North Korean soldiers fighting on the Russian side in the Kursk region, likely the first such development since Pyongyang dispatched soldiers to help with the Kremlin’s war in Eastern Europe.

Zelensky wrote Saturday on social media the two soldiers, when captured, were wounded and were taken to Kyiv, the country’s capital, to be interrogated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), also known as SBU, the nation’s main internal security agency.

“This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a Saturday post on the social media platform X while adding that the North Koreans are getting medical attention.

The Ukrainian president added that he instructed the SBU to give reporters access to the pair of prisoners because the “world needs to know the truth about what is happening.”

The intense combat in Kursk has continued with the Kremlin’s troops looking to push Ukrainian soldiers back across the Russian border.

In late October last year, the Pentagon said that North Korea sent around 10,000 troops to train in Russia and be eventually utilized on the battlefield.

The White House said in late December 2024 that North Koreans were getting injured at a rapid rate, with more than 1,000 being killed or wounded in just one week. The figure is lower than what Zelensky said just days earlier, claiming that the number of North Korean soldiers who are either injured or dead “already exceeds 3,000 people,” according to preliminary data.

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