| The two soldiers, one with bandages on his hands and the other with one around his jaw, are the first North Koreans to be captured by Ukraine. And they represent an unusual propaganda opportunity for Ukraine. “It’s an astonishing moment in the war,” Luke Harding said. “If you’d told me five years ago that North Korean soldiers would be fighting against Ukraine, I’d have said you were mad. We know North Koreans are there, but Russia has formally denied that is the case. So it’s a big thing for Kyiv to be able to say they’ve captured them.” What did we learn from the video released by Ukraine? The two men in the clip posted on social media by Volodymyr Zelenskyy appear battered and disoriented, with little understanding of the war they have found themselves in. Under questioning, one says he thought he was taking part in a training exercise rather than a war. The other says his family don’t know where he is. One says that he wants to return to North Korea, and the other says he would like to stay in Ukraine but that he will go home if required to do so. Zelenskyy has said the two men will be made available to the media in the future. We should, however, exercise some caution in interpreting what they say in the video – it was produced by Ukraine without access for journalists or other third parties. “But it appears they have provided useful information,” Luke said. One had a fake Russian name and documents – his apparent counterfeit ID is pictured above - confirming previous reporting on the subterfuge involved in getting them to the front. “They said they were experienced soldiers, that they’ve been living in dugouts in small groups, that morale is high. They are likely to be providing more information off camera that the Ukrainians can use.” Why did Ukraine release the video? In his message accompanying the video, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to hand over North Korean prisoners of war if an exchange for Ukrainians held by Russia could be organised. And he said that North Koreans who do not wish to return home could “bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean”. There are other unspoken motives that may be in play: a hope that the video will prove galvanising to western support, a morale boost for Ukrainians and a way to signal to Pyongyang that their role in the conflict could lead to their adversaries gaining military intelligence. Earlier yesterday, Luke said, he had been conducting an interview while an Iranian Shahed missile flew overhead. “And there are other missiles with Chinese microelectronics, and North Korean soldiers 50 kilometres away. So the video is a persuasive way to argue that this is not a regional conflict, it is a supranational conflict, with consequences all over the world.” Another question is whether the release of the video constitutes a breach of the soldiers’ human rights: the Geneva conventions say that prisoners of war should not be made into a “public curiosity”. It is a matter for debate whether this video constitutes such treatment. “We should note that the Russians routinely torture, starve, beat and electrocute Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Luke said. “The available evidence suggests that the Russians are quite well treated, partly because there are far more Ukrainians captured than the other way round, so Ukraine wants to have a stronger hand in exchange negotiations.” What impact have North Korean soldiers made on the war? The North Koreans have been fighting in the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukraine made a cross-border incursion last August and have been defending their captured territory since. Kyiv is thought to have lost about half of the 1,250 square kilometres that it captured last summer at the cost of many Russian and Ukrainian lives. There are varying estimates of the number of North Korean troops, but the Pentagon puts the number on the frontline since late last year at about 11,000. A South Korean MP claimed yesterday that about 300 had been killed, and 2,700 injured. With so little information available from conventional sources about the state of the North Korean military, analysts have reached different conclusions about their value to the Kremlin. By one account, they are simply cannon fodder, called on because of the number of Russian casualties during the war so far – about 600,000 killed or injured, the US estimates – to push the Ukrainians back through sheer weight of numbers. Some observers say they are likely to be poorly trained in the specific circumstances that they face in Kursk: the South Korean intelligence agency told lawmakers in Seoul that North Korean troops had been seen in battlefield footage shooting at drones too far away to hit, and charging at the Ukrainians without adequate artillery support. But Ukrainian military sources have said that the North Koreans are a formidable opponent, with a sometimes suicidal commitment to their mission. Yaroslav Chepurnyi, a spokesman of the Ukrainian army, told Politico yesterday: “They have been blowing themselves up when they see capture is in sight.” Some have been seen setting off grenades held next to their heads when they believe they are about to be captured. “When they first joined the conflict, they were marching in open ranks across snowy fields, and being slaughtered,” Luke said. “But now military intelligence sources say that they have adapted and improved – they’re operating in smaller groups, and dealing better with drones.” That suggests one boon to Pyongyang in supplying troops beyond the hefty price Russia is paying: “They are using this as a training ground in the modalities of 21st-century war. There will be survivors who are shipped back and used as the next generation of military trainers.” What future might the captured soldiers have? In this piece published yesterday, Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Raphael Rashid in Seoul write that despite the unusual circumstances of their capture, South Korea has a general policy of accepting any would-be defector and promises them protection. They note that, for Seoul, their defection would represent a propaganda coup and could have valuable military intelligence. As for whether North Korea or Russia will want them back, they quote Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, a legal analyst at Seoul-based NGO Transitional Justice Working Group: | 