Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv ready to swap North Korean soldiers for Ukrainian PoWs, Zelenskyy says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday he was ready to hand over captured North Korean soldiers to Pyongyang in exchange for the return of Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Russia. Zelenskyy’s offer came hours after South Korea’s National Intelligence Service confirmed Ukraine’s announcement from the previous day that it had captured two North Korean soldiers.

In a post on X Sunday, Zelenskyy said: “Ukraine is ready to hand over Kim Jong-un’s soldiers to him if he can organise their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia.” There would “undoubtedly be more” North Korean soldiers captured by Kyiv, he added. “There should be no doubt left in the world that the Russian army is dependent on military assistance from North Korea.”

One of the men said he wanted to return to North Korea while the other said he wanted to remain in Ukraine, according to translated comments from a video of the two men’s interrogations posted by Zelenskyy. “For those North Korean soldiers who do not wish to return, there may be other options available,” said Zelenskyy. “In particular, those who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean will be given that opportunity.”

The soldiers are the first captive North Koreans to survive. They represent a PR opportunity for Kyiv, during a precarious moment for Ukraine as Donald Trump returns to the White House. Zelenskyy is keen to emphasise that Ukraine is fighting an unprecedented coalition of malign autocratic states. One is North Korea, which has supplied Moscow with short-range ballistic missiles, artillery shells and – since last November – about 10,000 elite troops.

Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson said that his country was neither at war nor at peace as he announced that Sweden would be sending armed forces into the Baltic Sea for the first time as part of increased surveillance efforts amid a spate of suspected sabotage of undersea cables. The country announced it will contribute up to three warships and a surveillance aircraft to a Nato effort to monitor critical infrastructure and Russia’s “shadow fleet” as the alliance tries to guard against sabotage of underwater infrastructure.

Russia on Sunday 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 10km (six miles) southwest of Kurakhove, a key logistics hub that Moscow claimed to have seized last week. On Saturday, Russia’s army said it had also taken new territory northwest of Kurakhove. The defence ministry said Sunday 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.

An emergency task force arrived in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region on Sunday as an oil spill in the Kerch Strait from two storm-stricken tankers continues to spread a month after it was first detected, officials said. The task force, which includes emergency situations minister Alexander Kurenkov, was set up after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on authorities to ramp up the response to the spill, calling it “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years.”

A local woman died on Sunday 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. On Saturday 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.

In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, drone attacks injured eight people Sunday 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.