Ukraine's presidential office denied that any confidential agreement existed after South Korea criticized President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for publicly disclosing the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war to Seoul. Russia also weighed in, reporting that President Lee Jae-myung had condemned Zelenskyy.
Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Zelenskyy, wrote in a social media post that no such agreement to keep the matter confidential had been made, according to Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda and the Interfax news agency on the 25th. "There was no such agreement. That is not true," he said, adding that concealing where particular prisoners are sent would also be wrong.
Lytvyn's comments came as he pushed back against claims from the camp of Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's ambassador to Britain and an opposition figure. Oksana Torop, a media adviser to Zaluzhnyi, wrote on Facebook the same day that the problem was that a confidential agreement between the two countries had existed. "It's a show, inflated publicity, dramatic effects for dramatic scenes. Here we go again," she said.
Torop then countered Lytvyn again, saying that as far as she understood, such a confidential agreement had existed and that the prisoner issue was part of broader cooperation talks with South Korea. Lytvyn replied that there had been no agreement to stay silent, and the exchange continued.
Zelenskyy disclosed in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on the 23rd that Ukraine had recently transferred two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea. Ukraine's presidential office described the background to the decision to send the prisoners to South Korea as a highly sensitive matter, saying the decision had been reached through direct dialogue with Seoul.
The following day, on the 24th, President Lee Jae-myung wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the repatriation of North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea was a sensitive matter with major implications for diplomacy, security and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, and criticized the public disclosure.
Lee said that given the various problems that disclosure would cause, keeping the matter confidential had been reasonable in every respect and that both sides had agreed to do so. "The Ukrainian side broke the confidentiality agreement and disclosed the transfer. I don't know what circumstances there were, but it is deeply regrettable," he said. "We call someone who harms another person's life and the national interest and security for their own petty gain a murderer or a traitor. It is not right to denounce a confidentiality measure that was reasonable and justified."
Some Russian outlets interpreted Lee's remarks as calling Zelenskyy a traitor. Moskovsky Komsomolets, a pro-government Russian outlet, ran an article headlined "Traitor and murderer: Zelenskyy infuriates South Korea's president," reporting that the anachronistic Ukrainian president's visit to the United States had ended in a serious international scandal. The outlet said Zelenskyy had fallen into a sordid trap by revealing that he had handed North Korean prisoners of war over to South Korea, and that South Korea's president had bluntly denounced Zelenskyy as a "murderer" and a "traitor."
Lee's references to a "murderer" and a "traitor," however, are understood to have been aimed at domestic figures, including members of the People Power Party, who criticized the South Korean government's decision to keep the matter confidential.
The two North Korean soldiers were captured by Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk region in January last year, and their existence became known when Zelenskyy disclosed it on social media. The South Korean government has said it would accept the two men, who are South Korean nationals under the constitution, given that they expressed a desire to defect through media interviews and groups of North Korean defectors.
