North Korean POW Tells Ukrainian Interrogators About Major Troop Losses

A wounded North Korean soldier captured by Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region earlier this month told interrogators that Pyongyang’s troops fighting for Moscow are suffering major losses.

Ukraine said last week that it captured two North Korean soldiers in the border region and posted videos of their interrogation, with one speaking on camera about his experiences. Moscow has refused to say whether North Korean soldiers were deployed to the Kursk region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday posted a video of a young soldier lying in bed saying there had been many casualties after he entered the battle on Jan. 3. He was responding to a question about the number of dead and wounded among his fellow servicemen.

In an earlier video, the same soldier said that he hid in a dugout when he saw other North Korean troops dying during an offensive but was himself injured and captured two days later.

In the video posted on Monday, the captured soldier 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 North Korean soldier also said he was brought to Russia in what he believed was a cargo vessel with around 100 others. They were then transported by sleeper train, he added.

The soldier said he was conscripted to the military at age 17 and had been serving since then. He repeated a claim from a previous video that he had not known he was being sent to Russia to fight Ukrainian forces.

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