border area, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
He made the comments days after Ukraine started launching new attacks in Kursk to hold onto ground taken during a swift incursion in August, which marked the first time since World War II that Russian territory had been occupied.
Moscow's counterattack has left Ukrainian forces over-extended and demoralised, killing and wounding thousands and re-taking more than 40% of the 984 square kilometres (380 square miles) of Kursk that Ukraine had occupied.
Russia’s Defence Ministry stated on Saturday that the army had obtained control of the settlement of Shevchenko in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk area.
It also stated that Russia had carried out strikes via aircraft, drones and missiles on Ukraine's military airfield and energy infrastructure which supports the country's army.
A map of Shevchenko:
"We are maintaining contact with Ukrainian security services," Zelenskyy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
He shared pictures of two men lying on beds in a room with metal bars across the windows. Both had bandages on, one around his chin and the other around his hands and wrists.
The White House and the Pentagon last confirmed that North Korean forces have been engaged in military action on the frontline, largely in infantry roles. They have been fighting alongside Russian units, or in some cases, independently around Kursk.
Zelenskyy stated that "capturing the soldiers alive was not straightforward." He claimed that Russian and North Korean forces engaged in a fight at Kursk have attempted to conceal the involvement of North Korean soldiers, including by killing wounded comrades on the battlefield to evade capture and interrogation by Kyiv.
A senior Ukrainian military official stated last month that a couple of hundred North Korean soldiers engaged with Russian forces in Kursk have been either killed or injured in combat.
An official was reportedly giving the first estimated number of casualty losses for North Korea, several weeks after Ukraine stated that Pyongyang had sent between 10,000 and 12,000 soldiers to Russia to aid it in its nearly three-year conflict with a much smaller neighbour.
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