Ukrainian investigators are questioning two soldiers from North Korea whom the country’s forces captured in Russia’s Kursk region, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Ukraine Invasion: News & Analysis
RFE/RL's Ukraine Live Briefing gives you the latest developments on Russia's invasion, Western military aid, the plight of civilians, and territorial control maps. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.
“These are two soldiers who, although wounded, survived and were brought to Kyiv and are talking to SBU [Ukrainian Security Service] investigators," Zelenskiy said in a statement on Telegram on January 11.
Zelenskiy's Telegram post included photos of the soldiers he says were taken prisoner. He did not provide evidence that they were North Korean, but if this is confirmed, it will be the first time Ukrainian authorities have published images of captured North Korean troops.
The Ukrainian president said it was “not easy” to capture the North Korean soldiers, claiming that Moscow attempted to hide their presence by letting Russian and North Korean troops kill their wounded comrades on the battlefield to avoid being taken prisoner by Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials said the prisoners were talking through interpreters working with South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS).
The SBU said one prisoner, who said he was born in 2005, claimed he believed he was "going for training, not to fight a war against Ukraine."
The other man was forced to write his answers because of an injured jaw, the SBU said. That soldier said he was born in 1999 and was a sniper in the North Korean army.
The developments followed new Ukrainian attacks in Kursk to prevent Russia from snatching back territory. A lightning Ukrainian offensive first captured large swaths of the Kursk region in August 2024. It was the largest incursion onto Russian soil since World War II.
Last fall, North Korea sent some 11,000 troops to the Kursk region to support Russian forces there. Moscow has reclaimed some 40 percent of the territory, but Ukrainian troops still control more than 500 square kilometers in Kursk, and Pyongyang's troops have reportedly been experiencing mass casualties.
SEE ALSO: North Korean Troops Take Pounding In Kursk As Kim Reportedly Doubles DownReferring to the captured soldiers on X, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said that the "first North Korean prisoners of war are now in Kyiv" and that they were "regular [North Korean] troops, not mercenaries."
“The security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific is directly linked. We need maximum pressure against regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang.,” he wrote.
SEE ALSO: Ukraine Has Launched A New Offensive Into Russia. Why And Why Now?Meanwhile, a Russian drone attack killed a woman in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region.
Ivan Fedorov, the head of the region’s military administration, said a 47-year-old woman was killed instantly after a Russian drone hit a civilian car with five passengers.
“The occupiers attacked Prymorske all night,” he said.
Fedorov said the wounded included two men aged 46 and 60. Two women, 49 and 52, were also injured.
SEE ALSO: Injuries Reported In Western Russian Town After Drone AttackEarlier on January 11, Yevgeny Pervyshov, the governor of the Tambov region in western Russia, said Ukrainian drones crashed into two apartment buildings in the town of Kotovsk, which injured several people.
Photos and videos of the incident, which have not been verified by RFE/RL, were posted online by local residents, who said there had been no air raid siren before the drones struck.