Ukrainian authorities said Saturday they had captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia, the first time they had been captured alive since North Korea sent troops to support Russia’s war effort.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the two wounded soldiers were captured in Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces are fighting to defend territory they seized in a surprise cross-border invasion last summer. He said he continues to do so.
Zelenskiy said in posts on various social media channels that the soldiers received medical treatment as required by the Geneva Conventions and were taken to the Ukrainian capital Kiev for questioning.
Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency SBU announced on Thursday that one soldier had been detained. He did not provide details on where or when the second person was captured, but said he was the first North Korean captured fighting with Ukraine in Kursk.
According to the SBU, the interrogation is being conducted through Korean interpreters in cooperation with South Korean intelligence agencies. The Korean Embassy in Ukraine did not respond to a request for comment. Neither Russia nor North Korea immediately commented.
Both Ukrainian intelligence and Zelenskiy shared photos and videos of two soldiers, one with a bandage on his jaw and the other with a bandage on his hand.
According to the rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect prisoners of war from becoming “objects of public curiosity,” but this concept does not allow prisoners of war to appear in any public place. It may also be interpreted as not being released.
Heavy fighting continues in Kursk as Russian forces attempt to rout Ukrainian forces and drive them back across the border. With the support of more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers, Russian forces have regained about half of the territory they lost in the region.
But Ukraine clings to more than 150 square miles of land within Russia. The White House announced that North Korean forces had suffered numerous casualties.
The Biden administration announced last month that more than 1,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded in a week in fighting with Ukrainian forces in Kursk, some choosing suicide rather than surrender.
