By Olha Chepil and AFP | 2025-01-23

KYIV -- Kyiv is analyzing information provided by two North Korean soldiers captured earlier this month in Kursk province, Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on January 20 posted a video of a young soldier lying in bed saying there had been many casualties after he entered the battle on January 3.

He was responding to a question about the numbers of dead and wounded among his comrades. He said he served in a reconnaissance unit, and while some North Korean soldiers had been trained to use Russian military equipment, he had not.

The soldier said he was brought to Russia from North Korea in what he believed was a cargo vessel with about 100 others. They were then transported by sleeper train, he added.

The soldier said he was conscripted to the military aged 17 and had been serving since then.

Poor training

The two North Koreans were captured on January 9 in Kursk province and handed over to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

Ukrainian troops stormed into the Russian province last August and remain entrenched there.

Because they do not speak Russian, English or Ukrainian, the prisoners of war (POWs) are communicating through Korean interpreters in cooperation with South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS).

"Immediately after being captured, the foreigners were provided with all the necessary medical care," the SBU said in a statement January 11. "They are being held in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law."

One of the North Koreans is named Lee Jong Nam, born in Pyongyang in 1999, and he is a scout sniper, according to Roman Bochkala, a Ukrainian war correspondent.

"He said that his first combat encounter occurred on January 8, with two assault groups from North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, each with seven servicemen," Bochkala, who has visited both South and North Korea, told Kontur. "Everyone else was killed, he said."

The second captured soldier was born in 2005 and has been serving as a rifleman in North Korea since 2021. When Ukrainians captured him, they found on his person a military ID bearing the name of a resident of Tuva, a Russian republic in Asia.

An analysis of the document showed that the Kremlin used a Russian citizen's personal information to create the false identity.

"The North Korean servicemen are armed with AK-12 assault rifles that they were given in Russia. For heavy weapons, they have 60mm mortars, which were delivered from North Korea," Bochkala said.

False pretenses

In addition to receiving false papers, the North Koreans, like Russian troops at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, said they thought they were traveling to take part in exercises, not to fight against Ukraine.

"The interrogation shed light on the story that the first Russian captives were spouting back in 2022 about exercises, saying that they didn't know where they were going," Ihor Chalenko, director of Ukraine's Center for Analysis and Strategies, told Kontur.

"It was like they were repeating the same thing word for word. At times like this, autocracies behave identically."

Pyongyang is estimated to have sent 11,000 troops to support Russia's war in Ukraine. Preliminary estimates put North Korean casualties in Kursk province at about 3,000: 300 killed and 2,700 wounded, according to the NIS.

"They're throwing the youngest soldiers into combat. Obviously, they're not adequately trained," Chalenko said. "But I can suppose that there are also separate elite units placed there in order to gain essential combat experience with an army formed according to the Western model."

Russia in 'bad position'

Moscow and Pyongyang have neither confirmed nor directly denied that North Koreans are fighting against Ukraine. The Kremlin has not commented on the capture of the North Koreans.

Moscow's use of North Koreans shows that the Russians are experiencing a personnel shortage, analysts say. If the current circumstances persist, Moscow will become only more dependent on Pyongyang.

"The use of North Korean troops shows the bad position of Russia, which, to carry out its aggression, is forced to draw in another dictator," Dmytro Levus, a Kyiv-based political and international relations analyst at the think tank United Ukraine, told Kontur.

"Not a single other Russian dictator ever went that far. These are urgently required measures, and displaying these captured North Koreans is like proof of that."

For Ukraine, the North Korean POWs could be a key bargaining chip in a swap for Ukrainian POWs in Russia, and an opportunity to deepen cooperation with South Korea, analysts say.

"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," Zelenskyy said January 12 in a post on X.

At the same time, South Korea is willing to take in Pyongyang's troops fighting for Moscow if they want to defect, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported January 14, citing comments by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jae-woong at a news briefing that day.

Ukraine should use the situation with the North Koreans to initiate closer cooperation with South Korea, said Ivan Stupak, a military analyst and former SBU officer.

"These guys are of great interest to South Korea," he told Kontur.