Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said forces operating in the Kursk region of Russia have captured two North Korean soldiers, marking the first time that Ukraine has captured alive soldiers from the isolated state.
“Our soldiers have captured North Korean military personnel in the Kursk region. Two soldiers, though wounded, survived and were transported to Kyiv, where they are now communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine,” Zelensky said Saturday in a statement on X, which include several images of the injured soldiers.
According to Ukrainian and Western assessments, some 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy several hundred square kilometers after staging a cross-border incursion in August last year.
Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said more than 1,000 North Korean forces had been killed or wounded in Kursk in the last week of December.
Zelensky said of the two Korean soldiers who had been captured: “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.”
Soldiers in bunk beds
The Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU, released video purportedly showing the soldiers.
In the video, the SBU spokesman says one of the North Koreans was captured on January 9 by Ukrainian special forces, and the other by Ukrainian paratroopers.
“They are being held in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law,” the SBU said.
The video shows the two soldiers in bunk beds in a cell. One has a wound to his jaw. Neither is heard speaking. An unidentified doctor says that the second soldier has a fractured leg.
The SBU spokesman said that “communication with them is carried out through interpreters of Korean,” in cooperation with South Korean intelligence service.
Saturday’s capture is the first time that Ukraine has captured North Korea soldiers alive from the battlefield.
The SBU released images of a Russian military ID card issued in the name of another person from Tuva in Russia, which it said was being carried by one of the captured soldiers. According to the SBU, the soldier said he had been issued the document in Russia last autumn. He also said that some of North Korea’s combat units had just one-week training with Russian troops. The other captive had no documents, the SBU said.
The soldier said he had been in the North Korean military and had thought he was being sent to Russia for training rather than combat, according to the SBU’s account.
It comes as Ukraine on Sunday renewed its offensive on Kursk, where its troops have been holding territory after launching a shock incursion last summer.
Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday that it had conducted a precision strike on a Russian military command post near the town of Belaya.
Although Kyiv’s troops quickly advanced through Kursk in the summer – in the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II – Russia eventually managed to push the forces back. The lines had been mostly static for weeks before Ukraine’s latest push.
In his daily address on Monday, Zelensky said Kursk offensive was important in preventing Russian from redirecting its troops to Donetsk and other regions in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Despite both sides being drained after nearly three years of war, frontline fighting has ramped up in recent weeks. With Donald Trump set to return to the White House this month – promising to end the war in a day, without saying how – Moscow and Kyiv appear to be making an 11th-hour push to gobble up territory and strengthen their negotiating hands ahead of potential peace talks.
This story has been updated.