According to the source, the motives for the escape have not been established, and the Russian army has begun searching for them. At the same time, Russian military officials are trying to conceal this information from higher command.
I wonder why they escaped... They come from the most oppressive country in the world and suddenly they are trasported in the middle of Europe. I guess many places would be happy to take them. If I were one of those soldiers, I would learn how to say "I surrender" and "I know where russians troops sleep" in ukrainian
North Korea undoubtedly have vetted political officers whose job is to shoot any regular troops who look like making a break for it, just in case the learned helplessness doesn’t hold.
This is probably a dumb question (sorry if it is), but which border were they running towards? I can imagine bad outcomes if they ran towards Ukraine and worse outcomes if they run back to Russia.
They appear to have run towards Ukraine, which is probably their best chance to get out of this conflict alive. I'm sure Ukrainian units in the area have been alerted.