Kyiv: We’ll help to free death sentence soldiers
Glimmer of hope as ambassador hints at prisoner exchange to end the nightmare
UKRAINE yesterday pledged to win freedom for two British soldiers sentenced to death by Russia’s political henchmen.
Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin were captured fighting for Ukraine and face execution by firing squad.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss held urgent talks with her counterpart in Kyiv yesterday amid an international outcry at the sham trial staged by Vladimir Putin’s puppet regime in occupied Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.
The two men’s terrified families were given a glimmer of hope as Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK suggested a prisoner swap would be negotiated.
Vadym Prystaiko told BBC News: ‘It will be a swap. The important question is what will be the price for this.’
Former Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick, who is Mr Aslin’s MP and who condemned the ‘disgusting Soviet-era style show trial’, said he had been assured by the ambassador that the Ukrainians will give ‘absolute priority’ to the Britons in prisoner-swap negotiations.
Mr Pinner, a 48-year-old Army veteran from Watford, and Mr Aslin, 28, a former care worker from Newark, Nottinghamshire, both moved to Ukraine in 2018 and joined its army. They served with Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade and were taken prisoner in Mariupol in April.
The United Nations branded their three-day trial as a war crime and a clear breach of their Geneva Convention rights as prisoners of war. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the White House was ‘gravely concerned’, while the German government condemned Russia’s ‘complete disregard for the basic principles of humanitarian international law’.
Mr Pinner’s Ukrainian wife Larysa blasted the ‘absurdity and cynicism of this rotten and false event called a trial’, adding she feared Russia would use the men as propaganda ‘to the fullest – and this circus will go on for a long time’.
‘I still pray that our warriors can endure all of this!’ she wrote on Facebook.
The Kremlin – which calls the shots in the so-called People’s Republic of Donetsk – continued playing political games yesterday by mocking the UK as ‘hysterical’ and telling it to deal directly with the regime in Donetsk, despite it not being recognised by any country except Russia. Moscow’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed the men’s ‘crimes’ had been ‘committed on the DPR’s territory’.
The kangaroo court in Donetsk found Mr Pinner and Mr Aslin guilty of being ‘foreign mercenaries’ attempting to conduct terrorist activities.
Yesterday an ‘appalled’ Boris Johnson ordered ministers to do ‘everything in their power’ to secure their release.
However the Government is determined not to be drawn into a direct confrontation with Moscow over the fate of the men, fearing it would bolster the Kremlin’s false claims that they were mercenaries rather than signed-up soldiers in the Ukrainian army.
Asked if Britain would talk to Russia to secure their release, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘Our priority is working with the Ukrainian government.’
After her phonecall with Ukraine foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, Miss Truss said they had discussed efforts to secure the men’s release, adding: ‘The judgment against them is an egregious breach of the Geneva Convention.’
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace – who has led the way in arming Ukraine – visited Kyiv yesterday, two months after Mr Johnson, and met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who lavished praise on Britain. Mr Zelensky told him: ‘I am grateful in general to Great Britain, the Government and the Prime Minister.
‘The war highlights who is our friend – not just strategic friends, but real friends. And I believe Great Britain is a real friend.’
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said there was ‘no party politics in this’ and backed the Government’s approach to freeing the men.
AT A kangaroo court, in an illegal selfproclaimed republic, sham judges condemn two British-born Ukrainian soldiers to execution by firing squad. it’s like some grotesque Orwellian nightmare.
shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin wore the uniform of the Ukrainian army when captured by the Russians and handed to the puppet People’s Republic of Donetsk. As such they are entitled to prisoner of war status under the Geneva Convention.
instead they are branded terrorists and their rights trashed. To Vladimir Putin, they are merely pawns in a cynical game.
The Mail fervently hopes Ukraine and the UK will succeed in securing their freedom, possibly through a prisoner exchange.
As for Putin, it’s just one more war crime to add to his ever-lengthening charge sheet.