An ordeal made of torture and humiliation. One of five Britons captured in Ukraine and returned to the UK after a prisoner swap between Moscow and Kyiv told in an interview with the British tabloid The Sun being beaten and forced to sing the Russian anthem in detention.
Aged 28, Aiden Aslin was taken prisoner in Ukraine, where he was fighting for kyiv, and was sentenced to death for mercenary. After his surrender in the siege of Mariupol in April, “the soldier asked in Russian ‘where are you from?’ I told him I was from Britain and he punched me in the face,” he told the Sun.
According to his account, he was then separated from the other prisoners and interrogated in the back of an armored vehicle.
“You are going to have a magnificent death”
“The officer was smoking a cigarette and knelt down in front of me to ask me ‘do you know who I am?’ I said no and he replied in Russian “I am your death””
“He said ‘see what I did to you?’ He showed my back. He showed me his knife and I realized he had hit me with it”.
The officer then asked him if he wanted “a quick death or a magnificent death”, continued the Briton, whose partner is Ukrainian, to which he replied that he wanted a quick death. “He smiled and said, ‘No, you’re going to have a wonderful death,'” Aiden Aslin explained to the Sun.
Forced to shoot propaganda videos
He said he spent the next five months in a 1.20 m by 1.80 m cell infested with cockroaches and lice, deprived of daylight except when he was taken out to shoot. propaganda videos or being able to communicate with the UK Foreign Office.
According to Sunthe prisoner heard the Russian anthem played on repeat and was ordered to get up and sing on pain of being beaten, and also to shout “glory to Russia”.
“After being forced to sing the Russian anthem every morning for the past six months, I think it’s time to learn something a little better and learn the Ukrainian anthem,” tweeted Sunday Aiden Aslin.
In the Sunhe also thanked “from the bottom of his heart” the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich – under sanctions from the United Kingdom and the European Union – for his role in the release of the five Britons, who were able to return to their country after an exchange of prisoners favored by Saudi mediation.