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Zelenskyy said Ukraine captured 2 wounded North Korean soldiers in Russia's Kursk region. Here's what we know.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine has captured two North Korean soldiers.Zelenskyy said the two soldiers were wounded and had been taken to Kyiv.South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has reportedly confirmed their capture.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine has captured two wounded North Korean soldiers.In a statement posted on X on Saturday, Zelenskyy said the soldiers had been captured in Russia's Kursk region and had been taken to Kyiv, where they were now "communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine." He added that they were receiving the "necessary medical assistance."Zelenskyy also shared images of two injured men, but he did not provide evidence that they were North Korean."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," Zelenskyy said, adding that he had instructed Ukraine's security service to allow journalists access to the captured soldiers.South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has reportedly confirmed their capture.The NIS told AFP that it had "confirmed that the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers on January 9 in the Kursk battlefield in Russia".The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has also shared some details from their questioning of the pair.The SBU said the North Korean soldiers did not speak Ukrainian, English, or Russian, "so communication with them is carried out through interpreters of Korean," with help from the NIS.The SBU said that one soldier told interrogators that he believed he had been sent for training, not to fight in the war against Ukraine.It added that one of the soldiers was found with a Russian military ID card "issued in the name of another person," while the other had no documentation with him.The soldier with the ID card stated that he was born in 2005 and that he had been serving as a rifleman in the North Korean military since 2021.The other was born in 1999 and had been a scout sniper in the North Korean army since 2016, the SBU said, citing "preliminary information."Pyongyang reportedly began sending troops to Russia in October.White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said last month that Russia was using North Korean troops to carry out "human wave" assaults on Ukrainian positions, resulting in heavy casualties."It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses," Kirby said. "These North Korean soldiers appear to be highly indoctrinated, pushing attacks even when it is clear that those attacks are futile."Zelenskyy said last month that preliminary estimates suggested that more than 3,000 of Pyongyang's soldiers had been killed or wounded in Kursk.He previously said that Russian forces had been trying "to literally burn the faces of North Korean soldiers killed in battle" in an effort to "conceal" their losses.In December, a North Korean soldier believed to be the first to be captured by Ukrainian forces died from his injuries, South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) said, per Yonhap news agency.This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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