KYIV: Ukraine said Saturday that investigators were questioning two wounded North Korean soldiers after they were captured in Russia’s Kursk region, saying they provided “indisputable evidence” that North Koreans were fighting for Moscow.
It is not the first time that Kyiv has claimed the capture of North Korean soldiers during its Kursk incursion but it has not reported being able to question any before.
In December it said it took several captive but they died from serious wounds.
“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.
The SBU security service gave some details of the men’s interrogation, saying both described themselves as experienced soldiers and one said he had been sent to Russia for training, not to fight.
But Ukraine has not provided any evidence that the men are North Korean.
In video released by the SBU, two men with Asian features are shown in hospital bunks, one with bandaged hands and the other with a bandaged jaw. A doctor at the detention center says the second man also has a broken leg.
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s military, including in the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock incursion in August last year.
Zelensky had said in late December that Ukraine had captured several seriously wounded North Korean soldiers who later died.
He said Saturday that it was difficult to capture North Koreans fighting because “Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded and do everything to prevent evidence of the participation of another state, North Korea, in the war against Ukraine.”
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.
The men do not speak Russian or Ukrainian and communication is through Korean interpreters, the SBU said, adding that this was “in cooperation” with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
The SBU video does not show the men speaking Korean. AFP reporters in Seoul have contacted the NIS for comment.
The SBU said the men’s capture provided “indisputable evidence of the DPRK’s participation in Russia’s war against our country.”
It showed a Russian army ID card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva region bordering Mongolia.
The SBU said that one POW carried this military ID card “issued in the name of another person” while the other had no documents at all.
Some reports have said Russia is hiding North Korean fighters by giving them fake IDs.
The SBU said the man with the Tyvan ID had told them he was given it in Russia in autumn 2024 when some North Korean combat units had “one-week interoperability training” with Russian units.
The man said he believed he was “going for training, not to fight a war against Ukraine,” the SBU said.
The man said he was a rifleman born in 2005 and had been in the North Korean army since 2021.
The other man wrote 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.
The SBU 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’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 defense ministry said troops had “liberated” Shevchenko, a rural settlement about 10 kilometers (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 toward 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 Saturday that one person had been killed and another wounded in Pokrovsk over the last day.
In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a Russian drone attacked a car in a village near the front line, killing a 47-year-old woman on the spot, its governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine says questioning 2 captured North Korean soldiers
https://arab.news/c4h3u
Ukraine says questioning 2 captured North Korean soldiers
- “Our soldiers captured North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media
- The SBU security service gave some details of the men’s interrogation, saying both described themselves as experienced soldiers
Swedish woman jailed for keeping Yazidi slaves in Syria
Accused of keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria in 2015, Lina Ishaq was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the Stockholm district court said in a statement.
The crimes warranted a sentence of 16 years, but taking a previous sentence into account it ordered her to spend 12 years behind bars, the court said. Prosecutors had demanded a life jail sentence.
The woman, a Swedish citizen, had already been sentenced to six years imprisonment in 2022 for allowing her 12-year-old son to be recruited as a Daesh child soldier.
Prosecutor Reena Devgun said she was happy with the convictions but she would likely appeal against the sentence.
“These are very, very severe crimes, and compared to other Swedish jurisprudence or Swedish sentencing traditions, I do think that there is room for a more severe sentence,” she told AFP.
The court said the case concerned nine Yazidi, six of whom were children at the time.
All the plaintiffs were captured by Daesh in attacks on Kurdish-speaking Yazidi villages that began in August 2014 in Sinjar, Iraq. Their male relatives were executed and thousands of women were taken.
After about five months of captivity, they arrived at Ishaq’s home in Raqqa.
“The woman kept them imprisoned and treated them as her property by holding them as slaves for a period of, in most cases, five months,” the court said.
Their movement was restricted, they were made to perform chores and some were photographed in preparation to be transferred to other people as slaves.
“Given the fact that she participated in the onward transfer of the injured parties, she is also responsible for enabling their continued imprisonment and enslavement,” the court said.
Ishaq also forced the Yazidis, who practice their own religion, to “become practicing Muslims” by making them recite Qur'an verses and pray four or five times a day.
She also called the injured parties “demeaning invectives such as ‘infidels’ or ‘slaves’,” the court said.
The court stressed “that the comprehensive system of enslavement” was one of “the crucial elements” implemented by Daesh in “the perpetration of the genocide, the crimes against humanity and gross war crimes that the Yazidi population was subjected to.”
As such, the court said “the woman shared the IS intent to destroy a religious group.”
Ishaq’s lawyer Mikael Westerlund said the woman had not decided whether to appeal, but said they were pleased the court had not handed down a life sentence as requested by the prosecution.
“It was important for the prosecution to sentence her for life,” he told AFP.
Around 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined Daesh in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo.
Ishaq grew up in a Christian Iraqi family in Sweden but converted to Islam after meeting her late husband and extremist Jiro Mehho, with whom she had six children, in the 1990s.
She traveled to Syria with her children in 2013. Mehho died in August 2013, and Ishaq moved to Raqqa in 2014 and re-married.
Global policymakers, innovators gather in New Delhi for India Energy Week
- Thousands of top industry leaders participate in Indian government’s flagship energy event
- India’s main focus in the energy sector is local production and supply chains, PM Modi says
NEW DELHI: Thousands of top industry executives, innovators and policymakers gathered in New Delhi on Tuesday for India Energy Week 2025, where they will be discussing energy access and sustainability.
More than 70,000 delegates, officials and visitors are expected to take part in the Indian government’s flagship annual energy event, which over the next four days will feature 500 speakers, 700 exhibitors and 10 national pavilions from countries including the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia displaying their newest technology.
Held at the Yashobhoomi convention center in New Delhi, India Energy Week 2025 aims to spotlight energy access, security and new global energy systems, in line with the South Asian giant’s vision of energy transition.
“India’s energy ambitions stand on five pillars: We have resources, which we are harnessing. Secondly, we are encouraging our brilliant minds to innovate. Thirdly, we have economic strength, political stability. Fourthly, India has strategic geography, which makes energy trade more attractive and easier. And fifthly, India is committed to global sustainability. This is creating new possibilities in India’s energy sector,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a virtual address to the event’s participants.
“The next two decades are very important for India’s development. And in the next five years, we are going to cross many big milestones. Many of our energy goals are aligned with the 2030 deadline. We want to add 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Indian Railways has set a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Our goal is to produce 5 million metric tons of green hydrogen every year by 2030 ... What India has achieved in the last 10 years has given us the confidence that we will definitely achieve these targets.”
India aims to generate 500 GW of electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, under its nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement. Solar energy is the dominant contributor to its renewable energy growth, accounting for 47 percent of the total installed renewable energy capacity.
The solar power sector has observed a 3,450 percent increase in capacity over the past decade, rising from 2.82 GW in 2014 to 100 GW in January 2025, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
The growth is fueled by local solar module production, which in 2014 had a capacity of only 2 GW.
“There is a lot of potential in India for manufacturing various types of hardware including PV modules. We are supporting local manufacturing,” Modi said. “India’s major focus is on Make in India and local supply chains.”
Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who opened the India Energy Week, urged participants to help chart a roadmap to stabilize energy markets and strengthen international cooperation.
“I am pleased that the event will see participation from more than 20 energy and other ministers, including deputies, from important stakeholders such as Qatar, UK, Russia, Brazil, Tanzania and Venezuela,” he said.
“It is our fervent hope that the India Energy Week becomes the definitive platform for shaping the energy agenda of the future. This is where transformative partnerships shall take shape, where game-changing technologies are unveiled, and the future of energy is written.”
Bangladesh aims to hold December polls in first vote since Hasina ouster
- Chief of Bangladesh’s interim administration earlier said reforms must take place before election
- Special commission report accused Hasina of rigging previous polls in Bangladesh
DHAKA: Bangladesh is preparing to hold elections in December, the first general vote since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, the former longtime prime minister, Election Commissioner Abul Fazal Mohammad Sanaullah said on Tuesday.
The country’s interim government, headed by Nobel prize laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, has been implementing a series of reforms and preparing for elections since taking charge in August, after Hasina fled Dhaka amid student-led protests that called for her resignation.
In November, the transitional authorities appointed a new five-member election commission, which held a meeting with foreign envoys on Tuesday to present its plans for the upcoming polls.
“We have told them that we must make preparations based on the earliest possible date for the election. Our position remains unchanged. We are preparing with December in mind,” Sanaullah told journalists after the meeting.
“The national election is currently the Election Commission’s priority.”
Yunus previously said that Bangladesh could hold elections by the end of 2025 or in the first half of 2026, provided that electoral reforms take place first.
This includes having the Election Commission prepare a new voter list, a process expected to take months.
Following 15 years of uninterrupted rule, Hasina and her Awami League party had allegedly politicized key government institutions, including the Election Commission.
In a report submitted to the interim government last week, a special commission on electoral reforms said that Hasina was responsible for rigging the last three national polls in Bangladesh, as it proposed more than 200 recommendations to improve the country’s voting system.
“In 2014, 2018 and 2024, we witnessed three general elections where the big takeaway was that these were not participatory. There were big questions regarding the quality of these elections due to the absence of the opposition,” Dr. Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah, chairman of the National Election Monitoring Council, told Arab News.
“I think the election should be organized within the shortest possible time considering the ongoing law and order, and political scenario of the country … if there is goodwill and good intentions from the authorities, nothing is impossible.”
Five killed in suicide bomb blast in northeastern Afghanistan, police say
- Blast at Kabul Bank kills bank’s security guard, four others including civilians and members of ruling Taliban movement
- Militants from the Afghan chapters of Daesh have waged insurgency against the Taliban since they returned to power in 2021
KABUL: At least five people were killed when a suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his body detonated outside a bank in northeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, police said.
The blast took place at 8:35 a.m. (0405 GMT) near the Kabul Bank branch in Kunduz province, killing the bank’s security guard and four others including civilians and members of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement, police said.
Seven people were wounded, provincial police spokesman Jumma Uddin Khakasr added.
He did not say who was believed to be behind the attack and no group has claimed responsibility so far.
Militants from the Afghan chapters of Daesh have waged an insurgency against the Taliban since they returned to power in 2021.
Taliban authorities say they have mostly crushed the group, even as it continues to carry out attacks in Afghanistan.
Suicide bomber kills five outside bank in Afghanistan: police
- Attack targeted a queue of people waiting to collect their salaries
KABUL: A suicide bomber killed five people including Taliban security forces on Tuesday in an explosion outside a bank in northern Afghanistan, police said.
Seven people were also wounded in the attack which targeted a queue of people waiting to collect their salaries from a bank in the city of Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz province.
“A suicide bomber, who had improvised explosive devices, detonated himself,” said Jumadin Khaksar, police spokesman for Kunduz province.
He said civilians, civil servants and members of the Taliban security forces were among those killed.
“The Kunduz Province Police Command is working with relevant organizations to find the perpetrators of the incident and bring them to justice.”
