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Two North Korean soldiers, who were fighting alongside Russian troops in Russia’s Kursk border region, are in Ukrainian custody, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says.
He made the comments days after to retain ground captured in that resulted in the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II.
Moscow’s counter-attack has left Ukrainian forces outstretched and demoralised, killing and wounding thousands and retaking more than 40 per cent of the 984 square kilometres of Kursk Ukraine had seized.
“Our soldiers have captured North Korean soldiers in Kursk. These are two soldiers who, although wounded, survived, were taken to Kyiv, and are communicating” with Ukrainian security services, Zelenskiy said.
He shared photos of two men resting on cots in a room with bars over the windows.
Both wore bandages, one around his jaw and the other around both hands and wrists.
Zelenskiy said capturing the soldiers alive was “not easy”.
He asserted that Russian and have tried to conceal the presence of North Korean soldiers, including by killing wounded comrades on the battlefield to avoid their capture and interrogation by Kyiv.
Ukraine’s security service SBU on Saturday said one of the soldiers had no documents at all, while the other had been carrying a Russian military ID card in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.
According to the SBU, one of the soldiers claimed he had been told he was going to Russia for training, rather than to fight against Ukraine.
He said his combat unit, made up of North Koreans, only received one week of training alongside Russian troops before being sent to the front.
A senior Ukrainian military official said last month that in Kursk have been killed or wounded in battle.
The official was providing the first significant estimate of North Korean casualties, which came several weeks after Ukraine announced that Pyongyang had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in its almost three-year war against its much smaller neighbour.
The White House and Pentagon last month confirmed that the North Korean forces have been battling on the front lines in largely infantry positions.
They have been fighting with Russian units and, in some cases, independently around Kursk.
