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.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS