The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has revealed that kyiv is ready to return North Korean soldiers that his forces reportedly captured last week, provided Kim Jong Un facilitates their exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
“Ukraine is willing to hand over Kim Jong Un’s soldiers if he can organize their exchange for our warriors who are captive in Russia“said the Ukrainian president.
“In addition to the first captured North Korean soldiers, no doubt there will be more. It’s just matter of time before our troops manage to capture others,” he warns.
The Ukrainian leader claimed on Saturday that his troops had captured to two North Korean soldiers in the Russian Kursk region. He posted a short video in which one of them is seen lying on a bed with his hands bandaged and the other sitting with a bandage on his jaw.
One of them allegedly said during interrogation that he had been told that I was on a training exercise and? I didn’t know I was fighting Ukrainian troops.
The soldier claimed to have hidden in a shelter during the fighting before being found a few days later. They had suffered significant losses and shortages of food and water for several days before his capture, he allegedly said.
A suspected North Korean soldier detained at an unidentified location, after being captured by the Ukrainian army, on January 11, 2025.
“One of them expressed his desire to stay in Ukraine, the other to return to KoreaZelensky said in a televised statement about the captured soldiers. To any captured North Korean “who expresses his desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in the Korean language you will be given that opportunity“.
One of the prisoners was wearing a Russian military identification card which, according to Zelensky, was “issued in the name of another person”. The Ukrainian intelligence agency SBU showed an identification card issued to a 26-year-old man from the Russian region of Tuva, bordering Mongolia. The other soldier I didn’t have papers.
North Korean authorities asked the country’s troops to “self-destruct” to avoid capture, according to Lee Seong-kweun, a lawmaker on the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee, who cited South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
“It was also found in lThe memoranda carried by the dead that North Korean authorities emphasized self-destruction and suicide before capture, and that the soldiers vaguely hope to join the (North Korean) Workers’ Party or be pardoned,” Lee said, citing the intelligence agency’s findings.
The captured North Korean soldiers had shown no intention of coming to South Korea, although South Korea would cooperate with Ukraine if there was a request, Yonhap news agency reportedciting NIS.
Ukraine, South Korea and the United States say that Pyongyang has deployed nearly 11,000 soldiers to help the Russian army combat the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursh border region that began last August. Russia and North Korea have neither confirmed nor denied the allegations.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.es
