British veteran paraded by captors on Russian state TV
Videos show injured father-of-four Andrew Hill, dazed and confused, being asked a series of questions
A FORMER British soldier captured in Ukraine has been paraded on Russian state television, asking if he was safe and when he might be able to return home.
Andrew Hill, 35, a father-of-four, who served in the Army several years ago, appeared injured, with bandages around his head and his arm in a sling.
Asked a series of questions by his Russian captors, he spoke quietly, barely looking up, seemingly dazed and terrified. Mr Hill, from Torpoint, Cornwall, confirmed his name and said he did not have a military rank.
He revealed: “I was helping out at the border for a bit and they said if I wanted to help more, I could help further in the country if I went with them.”
He is the fifth Briton to have been captured by Vladimir Putin’s troops in Ukraine within a fortnight.
Two aid workers, Paul Urey, 45, and Dylan Healy, 20, are believed to have been detained on Monday and accused of being spies. Shaun Pinner, 48, and Aiden Aslin, 28, were captured the previous week in the city of Mariupol.
Mr Urey’s mother, Linda, revealed yesterday that she had begged her son not to go to Ukraine, but he said he “couldn’t live with himself ” if he did not.
She revealed that on the morning of her son’s disappearance, he messaged her to say he was “going to be going off radar” for 36 hours. She had since received a message simply saying: “Morning” and that he could not speak but would call her.
“That was weird,” she said. “He always says ‘Mum’ and he didn’t say ‘Mum’... I don’t know if it was him.”
It came after Scott Sibley, a former British soldier who served in Afghanistan, became the first Briton confirmed to have been killed fighting in the conflict. Mr Sibley, 36, a father of three who served in the Royal Logistic Corps, died last weekend. His relatives were yesterday still trying to establish the circumstances of his death.
One family friend said that few people who knew him had been told he had gone to Ukraine, as he wanted to “keep it quiet” for security reasons.
Meanwhile, a former US marine from Tennessee, who was working in the country with a private military contracting company, was also confirmed dead. Willy Cancel, 22, who has a sevenmonth-old baby, signed up to work for the company in February and crossed into Ukraine on March 12 or 13, his mother, Rebecca Cabrera, told CNN.
Two two-minute videos of Mr Hill, apparently spliced and edited from a longer interview, were released on state television yesterday. The channel said: “Andrew Hill laid down his arms and surrendered to Russian servicemen in the Mykolaiv region. A group of mercenaries, in which the Briton fought, was defeated, and he was wounded.”
A relative in Cornwall, who did not want to be named, confirmed that the family had seen the video and were “incredibly concerned” for his welfare.
Friend Candice Morgan added: “Seeing that video is so … traumatic. Andrew’s family are in bits. They just want him to be treated properly and for him to be able to come back home safely.”
In one of the videos, Mr Hill looked up at his captors and asked: “Am I safe?”
He was told that he was and appeared reassured, before asking: “Is there any way of being able to get back to England or anything like that?”
One of his captors, who remained off camera, told him: “I absolutely cannot say right now how long it is going to take but you can be sure that nothing endangers your life.”
Mr Hill said he had an ex-wife but that his father had died on New Year’s Eve and he did not have a relationship with his mother. Asked if there was anyone else who cared about him, he said he had four children and a partner.
He was also asked if he had a message for other Englishmen who might decide to travel to Ukraine, and replied: “They need to really think about it. This doesn’t involve us.”
‘I absolutely cannot say right now how long it is going to take but you can be sure that nothing endangers your life’