Ukraine War Briefing: Ukraine Captures “Two North Korean Soldiers in Russia” | Ukraine

Ukraine said it was interrogating two North Korean soldiers after capturing the pair in Russia’s Kursk region, the first time it has announced the live capture of North Korean soldiers since entering the war last year. President Volodymyr Zelenskyj said on Saturday on X that the soldiers had been captured by Ukraine’s special forces and were being interrogated by the domestic secret service SBU in Kiev. The SBU released a video showing the two men in hospital bunks, one with bandaged hands and the other with a bandaged jaw. It was said that their questioning was carried out in Korean with the help of the South Korean secret service NIS. Neither Russia nor North Korea immediately responded to the announcement.

The SBU said the two captured North Korean men told interrogators they were experienced soldiers, and one said he had been sent to Russia to train, not to fight. It was said that one prisoner of war had a Russian military ID card “issued in the name of another person,” while the other had no documents. The SBU showed an ID card of a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tuva region on the border with Mongolia. The SBU added that he was a rifleman born in 2005 and has been in the North Korean army since 2021. The other man, who wrote his answers because of his jaw injury, said he was born in 1999, joined the Army in 2016 and was a scout sniper, the SBU said.

South Korean intelligence confirmed on Sunday Ukraine’s information about the capture of the soldiers. The NIS said it “confirmed that the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers on January 9 at the Kursk battlefield in Russia.” It was also said that one of the captured soldiers revealed during his interrogation that he received military training after arriving in Russia in November. The soldier said North Korean forces suffered “significant casualties during the battle,” NIS said. According to the NIS, one of the men remained “without food or water for four to five days before being captured.”

Zelensyy said it was difficult to capture North Koreans alive because “Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded” to cover up “evidence of the involvement of another state, North Korea, in the war.” He said he would allow media access to the prisoners of war because “the world needs to know what is happening.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote online: “We need maximum pressure against the regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang.”

Russia said its army had seized control of a village near the eastern Ukrainian logistics hub of Pokrovsk, a key target in its advance through the Donetsk region. The Ukrainian military did not mention the village of Shevchenko in its latest report on front-line activities, but said Russia had launched more than 50 attacks on its forces’ positions near Pokrovsk in the past 24 hours. The Russian military report said its troops launched attacks with aircraft, drones and missiles on Ukrainian military airfields and energy infrastructure that supplies its army. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces repelled 46 of 56 Russian attacks on about a dozen cities in the Pokrovsk sector. Ten clashes continued. The governor of the part of Donetsk region held by Ukrainian forces, Vadym Filashkin, said one resident was killed and four wounded when a village north of Pokrovsk came under Russian fire.

Russia fired 74 drones into Ukraine overnight, the Kiev Air Force said early Saturday, adding it shot down 47 of them while 27 others disappeared from radar without reaching their targets. According to the Air Force, buildings and vehicles in seven different regions were damaged by falling debris from downed drones, but there were no injuries.

Ukraine launched drone strikes in several regions of Russia, hitting two houses in the Tambov region and injuring several people, Russia said on Saturday. Ukraine denies attacks on civilian targets in Russia. Regional director Evgeny Pervyshov said on Telegram that people were being treated for injuries caused by broken windows when drones hit two houses in the city of Kotovsk, 480 km (300 miles) southeast of Moscow. The Russian Defense Ministry said it intercepted and destroyed 85 Ukrainian drones in several regions of the country overnight, including 31 drones over the Black Sea, 16 each in the Voronezh and Krasnodar regions and 14 over the Sea of ​​Azov.

Vladimir Putin on Saturday awarded Lt. Col. Andrei Grigoryev Russia’s highest bravery award after a widely circulated video showed him killing a Ukrainian opponent in hand-to-hand combat. Ukrainian media identified the killed soldier as Dmytro Maslovsky from the southern Odessa region.