Ukraine says it has captured two North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces captured two North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in the Russian border region of Kursk.

He made the comments days after Ukraine began launching new attacks in Kursk to hold on to territory it seized in a lightning incursion in August that led to the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II.

Moscow’s counteroffensive exhausted and demoralized Ukrainian forces, killing and wounding thousands and recapturing more than 40 percent of the 984 square kilometers (380 square miles) of Kursk that Ukraine had captured.

“Our soldiers captured North Korean soldiers in Kursk. These are two soldiers who survived, although wounded, and were transferred to Kiev, and are communicating” with Ukrainian security services, Zelensky said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

He shared photos of two men resting on cots in a room with bars over the windows. They both wore bandages, one around their jaws and the other around their hands and wrists.

Zelensky said that capturing soldiers alive is “not an easy matter.” He asserted that Russian and North Korean forces fighting in Kursk tried to hide the presence of North Korean soldiers, including by killing their wounded comrades on the battlefield to avoid capture and interrogation by Kiev.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) provided more information about the two soldiers. It said in a statement that one of them had no documents at all, while the other had a Russian military ID card in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region on the border with Mongolia.

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“The prisoners do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, so communication with them is carried out through Korean translators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence,” the statement said.

According to the Ukrainian Security Service, one soldier claimed that he was told that he was going to Russia for training, not to fight against Ukraine.

The agency said the two men received medical care in line with the Geneva Conventions, and were being investigated “in cooperation with South Korean intelligence.”

A senior Ukrainian military official said last month that several hundred North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk were killed or wounded in the battle.

The official was providing the first major estimate of North Korea’s casualties, which came several weeks after Ukraine announced that Pyongyang had sent between 10,000 and 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in its nearly three-year-old war against its much smaller neighbour.

The White House and Pentagon confirmed last month that North Korean forces are fighting on the front lines in largely infantry positions. They were fighting with Russian units and, in some cases, independently around Kursk.

& Edition 2025 The Canadian Press