TWO CAPTURED AMERICANS AREN’T POWS, KREMLIN SAYS
Russia argues they aren’t protected by Geneva Conventions
The Kremlin’s chief spokesperson told NBC News on Monday that two American fighters who went missing in Ukraine, Alex Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, were “soldiers of fortune,” and had been taken into custody. The spokesperson also claimed that the two men were not protected by Geneva Conventions as prisoners of war.
In the first comments the Kremlin has made about the two men, the spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said they had been involved in shelling and firing on Russian forces and should be “held responsible for the crimes they have committed.” He said they were being held while their case was investigated.
The U.S. State Department released a statement urging Moscow and authorities in Russian-occupied Ukraine to abide by international law. “We call on the Russian government — as well as its proxies — to live up to their international obligations in their treatment of any individual, including those captured fighting in Ukraine,” the statement from the State Department press office said.
The families of the men reported them missing last week, and on Saturday the State Department described them as “reportedly captured by Russia’s military forces in Ukraine.” Both are U.S. military veterans
who volunteered to fight in Ukraine.
The two were fighting with a small group of foreign soldiers and went missing in action when their platoon came under heavy fire in a village near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which is about 25 miles from the Russian border.
Under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war must be treated humanely and are protected from prosecution for taking part in hostilities. The only exception is prosecutions on war crimes charges.
But Peskov said the men were not part of the Ukrainian army and so were not entitled to protections granted to combatants under the Geneva Conventions. Drueke is a former U.S. Army staff sergeant who served two tours in Iraq, while Huynh is a former Marine.
The case of the two men has underlined the perils facing thousands of foreign volunteers who have gone to
fight in Ukraine. This month, a court in Russianoccupied eastern Ukraine sentenced three foreign fighters to death, accusing the men, from Britain and Morocco, of being mercenaries who intended to carry out terrorist acts. Legal experts said the trial and draconian sentences appeared calculated as a warning to foreign volunteers not to take up arms against Russia.
The State Department said Saturday that it had reviewed photos and videos online that appeared to show the two Americans, although it declined to comment on the authenticity of the images or on the men’s conditions.
U.S. officials were in contact with the men’s families, the Ukrainian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross, a State Department spokesperson said.