Two more British captives face death penalty charge at hands of Putin cronies
TWO Britons were last night facing the death penalty after being charged with ‘mercenary activities’ by the pro-Russian puppet government in eastern Ukraine.
Chef Dylan Healy, 22, and Army veteran Andrew Hill, 35, were captured in April and detained in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), a breakaway state backed by Moscow.
The charges, announced by the Kremlinrun Tass news agency, come after two other Britons, Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, were sentenced to death last month by a DNR court.
It is hoped that all British captives will be exchanged in a prisoner swap with Russia. But hardline figures in Moscow want the men to be executed.
Last night, the UK Foreign Office said: ‘We condemn the exploitation of prisoners of war and civilians for political purposes and have raised this with Russia. ‘We are in constant contact with the Government of Ukraine on their cases and are fully supportive of Ukraine in its efforts to get them released.’
Mr Healy, a hotel chef from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was captured in April at a Russian military checkpoint in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region while driving to evacuate a Ukrainian woman and her children. He had been volunteering as an aid worker for the Presidium Network, a humanitarian organisation. Mr Hill, a father-of-four from Plymouth, who was fighting as a military volunteer in the Ukrainian army, was captured in the south-western Mykolaiv region around the same time.
Mr Hill, who had served in the Lancaster Regiment in the British Army, was paraded on Russian TV looking seriously injured, with his head bandaged and his left arm in a plaster cast in one video. In footage which appeared to be filmed under duress, he pleaded: ‘I want to go home, to my homeland, to my family, to my children. I just want to go home. I will tell them the truth.’
This weekend it emerged that Mr Aslin, from Newark, has appealed against his death sentence, but there was no news about Mr Pinner, from Watford. It is understood that pro-Russian rebels in the DNR are holding another Briton, Paul Urey, 45, who has not yet been charged.
Amnesty International said the ‘exploitation’ of the British men’s capture is ‘adding to a huge catalogue of war crimes’ that Russia has allegedly committed in Ukraine.
Spokesperson Kristyan Benedict said: ‘This is a sham process designed to exert diplomatic pressure on the UK, not least as it comes shortly after Britain announced a large shipment of weapons for Ukraine.’
Ukraine’s state emergency services said yesterday that the death toll from a Russian missile attack on civilians in a shopping centre in Kremenchuk last week is likely to rise to 29. Fierce fighting continued in eastern Ukraine, where Russian artillery pounded the city of Lysychansk, a key prize in Putin’s plan to seize the Donbas region.
Last night, rebel fighters were pictured raising the red Soviet Union hammer and sickle flag in the city.
Notorious Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov claimed that Lysychansk had been ‘completely surrounded’ by invading forces. But a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Guard denied that the city had fallen.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had destroyed five Ukrainian command posts and three ammunition warehouses in the Donbas region and the southern city of Mykolaiv.
Moscow also said that its forces killed 120 Ukrainian troops and destroyed 15 vehicles in fierce fighting near the eastern city of Bakhmut.