Everything we know about ‘North Korean soldiers’ captured by Ukraine
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Kyiv claims to have captured two North Korean soldiers during fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. Ukraine has found “irrefutable evidence” of North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war against his country, president Volodymyr Zelensky said this week as he announced the capture of two North Korean soldiers.
![[Photo shared by Volodymyr Zelensky on Telegram shows one of the captured soldiers]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/14/09/Ukraine-POW2.jpg)
The two men were reportedly captured during fighting in Russia’s Kursk border region, where the Ukrainian forces launched an incursion last August. North Korea has deployed some 12,000 troops to aid Russia’s war effort, Ukraine has said, echoing assessments by American and South Korean intelligence agencies.
![[Cell holding the captured soldiers is marked ‘Camp for Prisoners of War’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/14/09/Ukraine-POW.jpg)
Kyiv previously claimed to have caught a North Korean soldier in Kursk on 27 December, but later said he had died of his wounds. The two soldiers captured on Saturday were brought to Kyiv for interrogation. Pictures released on social media by Mr Zelensky show two men resting on cots in a prison cell with bars over the windows. Both wear bandages, one around his jaw and the other around his hands and wrists.
![[The Russian military ID card of one of the captured soldiers]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/14/09/Ukraine-POW3.jpg)
Mr Zelensky did not give their names but the Ukrainian intelligence service claimed that one of them carried a Russian military ID card issued in the name of a person from the Tuva republic bordering Mongolia. The other man possessed no documents when he was captured.
Moscow was “trying to hide the fact these are soldiers from North Korea by giving them documents claiming they are from Tuva or other territories under Moscow’s control. But these people are actually Koreans, they are from North Korea,” the president’s office said, without offering any evidence.
