KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that \u201cseveral\u201d wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukrainian forces, as he accused Russia of throwing them into battle with \u201cminimal protection.\u201d
\nUkraine and its western allies say North Korea has sent thousands of soldiers to support Russia\u2019s army, in what is seen as a major escalation in the nearly three-year war following Moscow\u2019s 2022 invasion.
\n\u201cToday there were reports about several soldiers from North Korea. Our soldiers managed to take them prisoner. But they were very seriously wounded and could not be resuscitated,\u201d Zelensky said in an evening address posted on social media.
\nSouth Korea\u2019s spy agency said earlier on Friday that a North Korean soldier who was captured while fighting in Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine had died of his wounds.
\nZelensky did not specify how many North Koreans had died after being captured by Ukrainian troops.
\nZelensky had earlier said that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been \u201ckilled or wounded\u201d so far as they joined Russia\u2019s forces in combat in its western Kursk border region, where Ukraine mounted a shock incursion in August.
\nSouth Korea\u2019s intelligence service had previously put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 1,000, saying the high casualty rate could be down to an unfamiliar battlefield environment and their lack of capability to counter drone attacks.
\nThe White House on Friday confirmed the South Korean estimates, saying that Pyongyang\u2019s troops were being sent to their deaths in futile attacks by generals who see them as \u201cexpendable.\u201d
\n\u201cWe also have reports of North Korean soldiers taking their own lives rather than surrendering to Ukrainian forces, likely out of fear of reprisal against their families in North Korea in the event that they\u2019re captured,\u201d National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
\nNorth Korea and Russia have strengthened their military ties since Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
\nA landmark defense pact between Pyongyang and Moscow signed in June came into force this month, with Russian President Vladimir Putin hailing it as a \u201cbreakthrough document.\u201d
\nNorth Korean state media said Friday that Putin sent a New Year\u2019s message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying: \u201cThe bilateral ties between our two countries have been elevated after our talks in June in Pyongyang.\u201d
\nSeoul\u2019s military believes that North Korea was seeking to modernize its conventional warfare capabilities through combat experience gained in the Russia-Ukraine war.
\nNATO chief Mark Rutte had also said that Moscow was providing support to Pyongyang\u2019s missile and nuclear programs in exchange for the troops.
\nSouth Korea\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday that Pyongyang is reportedly \u201cpreparing for the rotation or additional deployment of soldiers\u201d and supplying \u201c240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled artillery\u201d to the Russian army.
\nPyongyang\u2019s involvement in Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine had prompted warnings from Seoul.
\nSouth Korea\u2019s President Yoon Suk Yeol, currently suspended, said in November that Seoul was \u201cnot ruling out the possibility of providing weapons\u201d to Kyiv, which would mark a major shift to a long-standing policy barring the sale of weapons to countries in active conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that \u201cseveral\u201d wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukrainian forces, as he accused Russia of throwing them into battle with \u201cminimal protection.\u201d Ukraine and its western allies say North Korea has sent thousands of soldiers to support Russia\u2019s army, in what is seen as a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":74852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74853,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74826\/revisions\/74853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}