Fears Britons will be treated as spies

TWO British men believed to have been detained in Ukraine by Russian forces were working as humanitarian aid volunteers, a non-profit group has said.

The Presidium Network said Paul Urey and Dylan Healey were captured early on Monday morning at a checkpoint south of the city of Zaporizhzhia.

Mr Urey, who was born in 1977 and is from Manchester, and Mr Healey, born in 2000 and from Cambridgeshire, travelled to Ukraine of their own accord, the organisation said. They were not working for the Presidium Network, which helps to get aid into Kyiv.

It said the pair were driving to help a woman and two children to evacuate when they went missing.

Presidium Network said it is concerned Russian forces may think the two men are British spies.

Dominik Byrne, a founder of the Presidium Network, said: “We need to put pressure on the Government to take this case seriously, and try, through their networks to verify this, but also to kind of help us find these people.”

Mr Byrne added: We want to tell the Russians basically that these aren’t spies.

“These aren’t military people. These are just humanitarian workers who got caught in a bad situation.”