Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he was ready to hand captured North Korean soldiers to Pyongyang in exchange for the return of Ukrainian POWs held in Russia.
Mr Zelensky's offer came a day after Ukraine announced it had captured two North Korean soldiers wounded fighting against Ukrainian troops in Russia's Kursk region.
It did not provide any proof of their nationality.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service backed up Ukraine's account yesterday, telling AFP it "confirmed" that the Ukrainian military had captured two North Korean soldiers on 9 January in the Kursk region.
"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," Mr Zelensky wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
There would "undoubtedly be more" North Korean soldiers captured by Ukraine, he added.
For "those North Korean soldiers who do not wish to return, there may be other options available", Mr Zelensky said.
North Koreans who wanted "to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean will be given that opportunity".
Neither Russia nor North Korea has acknowledged that North Koreans have been deployed to fight against Ukraine.
The two countries have boosted their military cooperation since Russia launched its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Zelensky claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot manage without military support from Pyongyang".
The Ukrainian president posted a video of an interrogation of the two North Korean prisoners of war, one of whom is lying in a bunk bed and the other is sitting up in bed with a bandage round his jaw.
One man can be heard speaking to a Ukrainian official through an interpreter, saying in translated comments that he did not know he was going to fight in a war with Ukraine and that his commanders "told him it was just training".
In translated comments, one of the men said that he wants to return to North Korea while the other said he will do what he is told but if given the chance, wants to live in Ukraine.
Russia claims capture of new villages in eastern Ukraine
Russia has claimed the capture of two villages in eastern Ukraine where its forces have been steadily advancing for months.
The defence ministry said forces had captured the village of Yantarne in the eastern Donetsk region, around 10 km southwest of Kurakhove, a key logistics hub that Russia claimed to have seized last week.
Russia's army said yesterday that it had also taken new territory northwest of Kurakhove.
The defence ministry said that Russian troops had also captured the village of Kalinove in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
The village is on the western bank of the Oskil River, which for a long time formed the front line between the two armies in the region.
However, a Ukrainian official said on Thursday that Russian forces had managed to establish a bridgehead on the western bank after crossing the river.
Russia's army has attempted for months to cross the river, which also cuts through Kupiansk, a city recaptured by Ukraine in its 2022 counteroffensive.
A local woman died in the Ukraine-controlled part of Russia's Kursk region after Russian strikes damaged a state boarding school where local people were sheltering, a Ukrainian official said.
Yesterday evening "Russian aviation carried out two air strikes on the area of the boarding school in Sudzha, as a result of which one woman suffered a laceration wound to her arm, and died in the morning," Ukrainian army spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky said on television news.
"The premises of the school were heavily damaged, all the windows and doors were smashed," he said.
"Today we have a big question - where to move people, how to keep them warm."
The spokesman said over 80 people were staying in the school, who "are all elderly" and many "have disabilities or Parkinson's disease or have had strokes".
There are about 2,000 Russian civilians still in Ukraine-controlled Kursk region, the spokesman said.
In Ukraine's southern Kherson region, drone attacks injured eight people in the main city of Kherson and a nearby village, regional authorities said.
In the Russian-controlled section of the Kherson region, a Ukrainian drone killed a 76-year-old woman, Russian-installed Governor Vladimir Saldo said on Telegram.
In the Russian city of Engels on the Volga River, a fire caused by a Ukrainian drone strike on Wednesday on an oil depot continued to burn out, Saratov Governor Roman Busargin said on Telegram.
Firefighters are working "24 hours a day" to extinguish the fire, Mr Busargin said, and the "amount of smoke and the total area of the fire is decreasing".
