Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday said that Kyiv is ready to hand over captured North Korean troops to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un if he can facilitate their exchange for Ukrainians held captive in Russia.
“In addition to the first captured soldiers from North Korea, there will undoubtedly be more. It’s only a matter of time before our troops manage to capture others,” Zelenskiy wrote on social media.
Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Ukraine had taken two North Koreans prisoner in Russia’s Kursk region, the first time Ukraine has announced the capture of North Korean troops alive since their entry into the nearly three-year-old war in autumn last year.
Photo: AFP / Ukrainian Presidential Press Service
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 troops from Russia’s ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow’s forces. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
Zelenskiy has said Russian and North Korean forces had suffered heavy losses.
“Ukraine is ready to hand over Kim Jong-un’s soldiers to him if he can organize their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia,” Zelenskiy said.
He posted a short video showing the interrogation of two men who are presented as North Korean troops. One of them was shown lying on a bed with bandaged hands, the other was sitting with a bandage on his jaw.
One of the men said through an interpreter that he did not know he was fighting against Ukraine and had been told he was on a training exercise.
He said he hid in a shelter during the offensive and was found a couple of days later.
He said that if he was ordered to return to North Korea, he would, but that he was ready to stay in Ukraine if given the chance.
Reuters could not verify the video.
“One of them expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine, the other to return to [North] Korea,” Zelenskiy said in a televised statement.
Zelenskiy said that for North Korean troops who did not wish to return home, there might be other options available and “those who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in the Korean [language] will be given that opportunity.”
Zelenskiy provided no specific details.
About 300 North Korean troops deployed to Russia have been killed, with another 2,700 injured in combat against Ukrainian forces, with the rising number of casualties attributed to a lack of understanding of modern warfare and “the way Russia used the North Korean military,” a South Korean lawmaker briefed by the nation’s spy agency said yesterday.
North Korean authorities appear to have called for its troops to commit suicide by blowing themselves up to evade capture, Lee Seong-kweun, a lawmaker on the South Korean parliament intelligence committee said citing the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
“It was also found in the memos carried by those killed that North Korean authorities emphasized self-destruction and suicide before capture, and that soldiers vaguely expect to join the Workers’ Party [of North Korea] or be pardoned,” Lee said.
Captured North Korean troops had not shown an intention to come to South Korea, though Seoul would cooperate with Kyiv if there was a request, Yonhap news agency reported citing the NIS.
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