Source : Perth Now news
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 Ukraine began pressing new attacks in Kursk to retain ground captured in a lightning incursion in August 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 North Korean forces fighting in Kursk 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.
A senior Ukrainian military official said last month that a couple of hundred North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces 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.
