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Vladimir Putin urged to 'kill North Korean troops' in Ukraine for one chilling reason

The Mirror2d

North Korean soldiers have flooded into Ukraine as they fight alongside Russian troops to advance as far as possible ahead of a much-hinted ceasefire orchestrated by the US

A photo of Putin
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian soldiers to kill wounded North Korean troops

Vladimir Putin has urged his soldiers to kill North Korean troops fighting on his side for a chilling reason, according to an expert.

North Korean soldiers joined Putin's invasion after the Russian dictator plunged the countries into full-blown war in 2022. But figures from South Korea suggest nearly 300 North Korean soldiers have died with another 2,700 having been injured. Reports suggest bodies of the dead have been burned in a bid to hid their losses. An expert has also claimed that both Russian and North Korean soldiers are under orders to kill the wounded soldiers to prevent them being captured.

Anton Shekhovtsov, a visiting professor at Central European University in Vienna, Austria, said: "Capturing POWs has proven challenging as North Koreans and Russians alike are apparently instructed to kill wounded NK soldiers to prevent them from falling into Ukrainian hands."

A photo of a soldier
North Korean soldiers are reportedly being ordered to kill their wounded comrades

He continued in a thread shared to X/Twitter: "Yet recently Ukrainians have successfully captured two NK soldiers alive. Both individuals carried Russian military service cards alleging they were born in the Tuva Republic, a region included in the Russian Federation. Russian non-regime media also report that the Russian authorities transferred identities of actual Tuvans to drafted NK soldiers. The choice of Tuva is understandable: native Tuvans bear a physical resemblance to North Koreans."

Anton added in a separate post: "By the way, Russia's former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu is himself of Tuvan origin. The fact that the captured NK soldiers' documents claimed Tuva as their birthplace corroborates earlier findings.

"Russian service cards recovered from the killed NK soldiers similarly falsely listed the Tuva Republic as their place of birth" "Yet another particularly interesting discovery was a diary found on one killed NK soldier. Ukrainian Special Operations Forces translated a number of pages from that diary, which the former owner had regularly updated, and one part was especially revealing for me."

A photo of North Korean soldiers
North Korean soldiers are fighting alongside their Russian counterparts

Ukrainian intelligence services announced in a statement that North Korean soldiers captured on January 9 were "provided with all the necessary medical care as stipulated by the Geneva Convention" before being taken to Kyiv, according to The Express.

Officials in the country continued: "They are being held in appropriate conditions that meet the requirements of international law."

South Korean parliamentarian Lee Seong-kwen previously told journalists that North Korean soldiers had been told to kill themselves rather than be captured. "Memos found on soldiers who died indicate that the North Korean authorities pressured them to commit suicide or self-detonate before capture," he told National Intelligence Service, NDTV.