Boris’s dilemma: How much is too much to pay for their lives?

AFTER the briefest possible trial by a kangaroo court in the unrecognised Donetsk People’s republic, two British prisoners of war from Ukraine’s foreign legion have been sentenced to death.

to have survived two months living underground in the hellhole of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol only to face a firing squad after a show trial is as cruel a fate as it’s possible to imagine.

And it’s a turn of events that represents a terrifying raising of the stakes in a conflict that has already put the world on the brink of nuclear war.

the question is what should our Government do to save the lives of Aiden Aslin, 28, from Newark, and Shaun Pinner, 48, from Watford?

Or, more to the point, what can it do? Some hotheads will inevitably call for an SAS rescue operation. But a commando raid, even by the cream of our armed forces, would be mission impossible.

the two men, who were both living in Ukraine with their Ukrainian partners when Putin’s tanks rolled over the border, are being held in a war zone which is bristling with anti-aircraft systems and trigger-happy soldiers.

the truth is that there’s very little that Whitehall can do to save them without dirtying their hands by negotiating with the Kremlin.

the good news from the two men’s point of view is that the russian president is bound to see them as valuable pawns in the chess game that the Ukraine conflict has become.

MOSCOW has already demanded an end to the Western sanctions strangling its economy in return for freeing up grain supplies from Ukraine’s bread basket ‘black earth’.

A ruthless leader who is prepared to starve countless millions across the third World in a bid to squeeze Ukraine and the West into making concessions is not going to grant clemency for nothing.

Nor will a man who squanders russian soldiers’ lives without compunction let sympathy influence his deal-making.

However. a prisoner exchange weighed heavily in favour of russia would be one option that might well be attractive to Putin.

One of Putin’s key Ukrainian agents, the billionaire oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, is currently under lock and key in Kyiv. the russian president is godfather to Medvechuk’s daughter Daryna, and Svetlana Medvedeva, wife of russia’s former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, is Daryna’s godmother.

If anyone can persuade President Zelensky to free the traitorous oligarch in return for two of his citizens, it’s Boris Johnson. Our Prime Minister’s stock has never been higher in Ukraine, thanks to his record in pushing through the supply of arms, including the highly effective Nlaw anti-tank weapon.

When Mr Johnson prevailed over the tory rebels in the no confidence vote on Monday evening, Mr Zelensky declared it ‘great news’ and pronounced himself ‘very happy’.

But while a behind-thescenes deal is probably the best hope for these British legionnaires, it would put our Government’s claim that it doesn’t negotiate with terrorists under the spotlight.

Bear in mind it was the socalled Donetsk People’s republic which shot down the Malaysian MH17 airliner in summer, 2014, and it has been blacklisted by the civilised world ever since.

It also served as one of the launching pads for Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine so it has no diplomatic relations with the UK.

Getting London to deal with them directly is likely to be one of the regime’s goals because it means they can say Great Britain has recognised their sinister self-proclaimed statelet. But ultimately, they’ll do what Putin tells them to do. that means Boris Johnson has to deal with the despot in the Kremlin. Will that put us on a slippery slope to appeasement?

Britain risks losing its status as the lynchpin of the anti-russian alliance helping Ukraine if we pay too high a price for Aslin and Pinner’s freedom.

that will put our Government in a dilemma: How much is too much to pay for British lives?

Any deal would set a precedent too and, given that as many as 20,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight for Ukraine, we can expect more show trials of captured volunteers in the future. We may see their motives as sincere and admirable, but the russians dismiss them as mercenaries at best and fascists at worse.

REMEMBER Putin has been claiming that his reason for invading Ukraine was to depose the neo-Nazis that the Kremlin says were really running the country. this charge is literally incredible because Mr Zelensky is actually Jewish and his family suffered in the Holocaust.

But to Putin’s stooges, Aiden Aslin and Sean Pinner’s service alongside the Azov Battalion in the Azovstal works marks them out as double enemies for the Kremlin. Not only were they in its most hated enemy unit but also, being British, they come from the country that has led europe’s backlash to Putin’s aggression.

there is a way they can be spared but it will take knifeedge diplomacy.

A deal would put the claim that we don’t negotiate with terrorists in the spotlight