Wounded troopers taken to Kyiv for questioning by Ukrainian investigators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence.
Ukraine says it has captured two North Korean troopers in Russia’s Kursk area and brought them to Kyiv, the place investigators have been questioning them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated the 2 prisoners of struggle have been “speaking” with the Safety Service of Ukraine (SBU), the nation’s home intelligence company.
“Russian forces and different North Korean navy personnel normally execute their wounded to erase any proof of North Korea’s involvement within the struggle,” Zelenskyy wrote on X on Saturday.
Ukraine’s SBU stated in a press release that one of many captured troopers had no paperwork in any respect, whereas the opposite had been carrying a Russian navy ID card within the title of a person from Tuva, a Russian area bordering Mongolia.
“The prisoners don’t communicate Ukrainian, English or Russian, so communication with them takes place by way of Korean translators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence,” the assertion stated.
In line with the SBU, one of many troopers claimed he had been informed he was going to Russia for coaching, somewhat than to combat towards Ukraine.
The company stated each males have been supplied with medical care in step with the Geneva Conventions.
Ukraine didn’t present proof that the captured troopers have been from North Korea.
Kyiv has repeatedly stated North Korean troops are preventing within the Kursk area, the place it launched an incursion in August, claiming management over a number of hundred sq. kilometres of territory.
Nonetheless, that is the primary time that the nation’s intelligence providers stated they’ve had the chance to query North Korean troopers. Whereas Ukraine had beforehand claimed to have captured North Korean troopers in fight, it stated that they had been badly wounded and died shortly afterwards.
Final month, a senior Ukrainian navy official claimed that some 200 North Korean troopers preventing alongside Russian forces in Kursk had been killed or wounded in battle.
The estimate of North Korean casualties got here weeks after Ukraine introduced that Pyongyang had despatched 10,000 to 12,000 troopers to Russia to assist it in its nearly three-year struggle towards its a lot smaller neighbour.
The White Home and Pentagon final month confirmed that the North Korean forces have been battling on the entrance strains in largely infantry positions.
