North Koreans' capture sheds new light on war

The news was sensational.

- Luke Harding

It travelled quickly among Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Russia's Kursk region. "I heard from a friend of a friend," one officer, Vitalii Ovcharenko, recalled.

"This was half an hour after it happened. My friend said: 'We've got a North Korean prisoner! He's in shock but OK."" Ovcharenko added: "Everyone wanted a selfie. They wrapped him in a blanket and gave him tea." This month's capture of two North Korean servicemen was an extraordinary moment in Russia's bloody war against Ukraine. The Kremlin has taken elaborate steps to conceal the presence of 12,000 elite troops sent in autumn by Pyongyang to Russia. At camps in the far east they were given Russian equipment: uniforms, rifles and fake military documents.

The foreign soldiers received phoney Russian names. All were "born" in the Siberian republic of Tuva, where locals have an Asian appearance and belong to a Turkic ethnic group.

They were attached to Russian marine and assault corps units and sent to the frontline, thousands of kilometres to the west, around the Ukrainianoccupied Russian town of Sudzha.

This legalistic pretence fell apart when two separate Ukrainian groups found the soldiers on the battlefield.