Berliner Tageszeitung - Ukraine says questioning POWs it claims are North Koreans

Kyiv, the United States and South Korea have accused nuclear-armed North Korea of sending more than 10,000 soldiers to help its ally Russia fight Ukraine.

"Our soldiers captured North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. These are two soldiers who, although wounded, survived and were brought to Kyiv, and are talking to SBU investigators," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media, referring to the country's security service.

Kyiv did not present direct evidence that the men are North Korean and AFP was unable to independently verify the prisoners' nationality.

Neither Russia nor North Korea has reacted to the claim.

The SBU said the men told interrogators they were experienced army soldiers, and one said he was sent to Russia for training, not to fight.

It released a video showing the two men in hospital bunks, one with bandaged hands and the other with a bandaged jaw. A doctor at the detention centre says the first man also had a broken leg.

Ukraine released no audio recording of the prisoners but said they were talking through Korean interpreters working "in cooperation" with South Korea's National Intelligence Service.

AFP reporters in Seoul have contacted the NIS for comment.

- 'World needs to know' -

Russia and North Korea have boosted their military ties since Moscow's invasion, though neither has confirmed that Pyongyang's forces are fighting for Moscow in the Kursk region.

Zelensky said last month that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been "killed or wounded" there, while Seoul put the figure at 1,0000.

In December, Kyiv said it had taken several North Koreans captive but they died from serious wounds.

Zelensky said Saturday that 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 participation of another state, North Korea, in the war".

He said he would provide media access to the prisoners of war because "the world needs to know what is happening".

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on X that the "first North Korean prisoners of war are now in Kyiv", calling them "regular DPRK troops, not mercenaries".

"We need maximum pressure against regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang," he wrote.

- 'Undisputable evidence' -

The SBU claimed the men's capture provided "indisputable evidence of the DPRK's participation in Russia's war against our country".

It said one POW carried a Russian military ID card "issued in the name of another person" while the other had no documents.

It showed an ID issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia's Tyva region bordering Mongolia.

Ukraine has said Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them fake IDs from regions such as Tyva with large ethnic minority communities.

"The Russians are giving these Koreans their documents, but they are not fooling anyone," Zelensky said.

One prisoner said he received the Tyvan ID in Russia in autumn 2024 when some North Korean combat units had "one-week interoperability training" with Russian units, the SBU said.

The man said he believed he was "going for training, not to fight a war against Ukraine", adding that he was a rifleman born in 2005 and had been in the North Korean army since 2021.

The other man wrote his answers because of an injured jaw, saying he was born in 1999, joined the army in 2016 and was a scout sniper, the SBU said.

It said the men were captured separately -- one on Thursday -- by special forces and paratroopers.

They are being provided with medical care and "held in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law", the SBU said.

- Russia claims gains -

Russia's army said Saturday that it had gained territory in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region northwest of the logistics hub of Kurakhove, which it claimed to have captured Monday.

The defence ministry said troops had "liberated" Shevchenko, a rural settlement about 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Kurakhove.

Shevchenko, a large village, is located west of the reservoir near Kurakhove and "is necessary to take under control, to protect the town from shelling", the RIA Novosti state news agency reported.

"Now Russian troops can move further towards the western border of the Donetsk People's Republic," it said.

Russia claims to have annexed the Donetsk region, which it refers to as the Donetsk People's Republic, though it does not control the whole region.

Ukraine has not confirmed the loss of Kurakhove, which had around 18,000 inhabitants before Russia launched its 2022 offensive.

The Ukrainian military's General Staff said Saturday that troops had stopped Russia's offensive actions in the area, including around Kurakhove.

Russia is also moving close to taking the vital frontline city of Pokrovsk north of Kurakhove.

Donetsk's regional governor Vadym Filashkin said a 78-year-old man had been killed Saturday morning by shelling of Pokrovsk.

O. Petrow--BTZ