Three Britons face Donetsk trial accused of being mercenaries

AN AID worker and two military volunteers from the UK will be put on trial in Ukraine’s separatist statelet by the same court that sentenced two Britons to death in June in a ruling described as “political”.

John Harding, Dylan Healy and Andrew Hill will face trial in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic on charges of fighting in Ukraine as mercenaries, Kremlinbacked separatists said in a statement on Monday citing what they call the local “Supreme Court”.

That same “court” in Donetsk in June sentenced Sean Pinner and Aiden Aslin to death after finding them guilty of fighting in eastern Ukraine and killing civilians.

Both men were legally employed by the Ukrainian forces and have family ties in that country, but Russia and the separatists have refused to treat them as normal combatants.

The Foreign Office last month accused Russia and its proxies in Donetsk of “exploitation of prisoners of war and civilians for political purposes”.

One of the new defendants facing trial is Mr Healy, a 22-year-old volunteer aid worker from Huntingdon, Cambs, who was captured by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region in April while evacuating a local woman and her children from the war zone.

He was detained alongside another British man, Paul Urey, who died last month in captivity of what the separatists said was “illness and stress”.

The other two defendants have fought alongside the Ukrainian army: Mr Hill, a military volunteer from Plymouth, was detained outside Mykolaiv, and Mr Harding, an ex-military man from Sunderland who has been fighting as part of the Ukraine army since 2018.

Russia state TV in July showed a video of Mr Harding appealing to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, for help.

The three British men are expected to stand trial with two men from Sweden and Croatia, the separatists said.

Russia’s state news agency Tass said the five men refused to testify or cooperate with the investigators. Prosecutors alleged all five men belonged to the Azov battalion and other Ukrainian military units captured in Mariupol.

Despite mounting expectations that Moscow is keen to use Mr Aslin and Mr Pinner for a prisoner swap, separatists in Donetsk said last month they had prepared an execution site. Their case will be reviewed in a Donetsk appeals court.

‘Russia and its proxies in Donetsk are exploiting Pows and civilians for political purposes’