Second British fighter in Ukraine is captured by the Russians and paraded on Kremlin state TV
Second Brit PoW is paraded by Putin: Ex-British Army solider now fighting for Ukraine is captured while defending Mariupol and shown on Russian TV
Second British fighter in Ukraine captured by Russians has been paraded on TVShaun Pinner, 48, was known to have been serving as a ‘contract soldier’ Pinner was clean-shaven with no visible wounds in the broadcast He said his name, his citizenship and announced he was captured in MariupolPinner will face further interrogation by the Russian Investigative Committee
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A second British fighter has been captured by the Russians in Ukraine while defending the besieged city of Mariupol, and has been paraded on TV.
Ex-British Army soldier Shaun Pinner, 48, was known to have been serving as a ‘contract soldier’ with Kyiv forces.
Looking clean-shaven with no visible wounds, he said on the broadcast: ‘I am Shaun Pinner. I am a citizen of the United Kingdom. I was captured in Mariupol.
‘I am part of 36th brigade, 1st Battalion Ukrainian Marine. I was fighting in Mariupol for five to six weeks and now I am in the Donetsk People’s Republic.’
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Brit fighter Shaun Pinner has been captured by Russian forces after surrendering in Mariupol. He was paraded on Russian television looking clean-shaven with no visible wounds. He said on the broadcast: ‘I am Shaun Pinner’
Shaun Pinner, 48, was known to have been serving as a ‘contract soldier’ with Kyiv forces, fighting side by side with Ukrainian marines to defend the key strategic port of Mariupol
He reportedly told his Russians captors that ‘he doesn’t want war and wants to go home’
He was shown on a military TV channel linked to war journalist Andrey Rudenko.
He reportedly told the Russians that ‘he doesn’t want war and wants to go home’.
Pinner now faces interrogation by the Russian Investigative Committee, it was announced today.
He was described as ‘an English mercenary who served in the 36th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Marines as a stormtrooper and is now in captivity.
‘This is the second Englishman caught in Mariupol.’
His fate in the hands of the Russians and the separatist authorities in Donetsk remains uncertain.
In early March, around a week after Vladimir Putin launched his brutal invasion of Ukraine, Pinner gave a hard-hitting dispatch from near the front line, describing the situation as ‘chaos’.
Since the war began, Pinner had been fighting as a ‘contract soldier’ alongside the Ukrainian armed forces. At the time, he said he had endured a ‘week of intense fighting’.
The 48-year-old, who previously served in the Royal Anglian Regiment, also confirmed a number of his squad had died in the early days of the war, saying : ‘We’ve lost a couple of guys today’.
Mr Pinner filmed the dispatch as Vladimir Putin‘s men laid siege to Kyiv and other major Ukranian cities. In the video he does not reveal his location for security reasons. Since then, Russian forces have pulled back from the Kyiv region to refocus their efforts on the east of the country.
Pinner now faces interrogation by the Russian Investigative Committee, it was announced today
Mr Pinner, who previously served in the Royal Anglian Regiment, said he fought with the Ukrainian army as a ‘contract soldier
The first British fighter captured in Mariupol was former care worker Aiden Aslin.
Russia’s state TV channels have broadcast suspect footage of Aslin being questioned by his captors after he was also forced to surrender in Mariupol.
Mr Aslin, 28, joined the Ukrainian marines four years ago. He has dual UK-Ukrainian citizenship and a Ukrainian fiancee, yet Russia appears determined to brand him an enemy agent rather than a prisoner of war.
The distinction is significant as under Russian law, those suspected of espionage face interrogation and lengthy prison sentences.
Whereas POWs are released at the end of hostilities, convicted spies may remain behind bars, perhaps until an exchange of agents can be arranged.
Kremlin-approved TV reporter Andrey Rudenko said in a Russian news broadcast Mr Aslin was an English mercenary ‘used [by the West] to perform various delicate tasks’, adding: ‘I am sure he will be able to shed light on the actions of Western intelligence agencies in Ukraine.’
An image uploaded to his social media shows Aiden, 28, bruised, beaten and in handcuffs
A second image, posted by a pro-Russia Telegram account, was closer to captured Aiden’s cut
Mr Aslin, from Newark, Nottinghamshire, was paraded on TV with his face bruised. It is thought he is being held in a military detention facility.
Footage shows him being questioned by one of his captors off camera and he supposedly agrees with the suggestion that ‘those who stood with you [in Ukraine], they are killers’.
It remains unclear whether the recording was doctored for political purposes.
But last night Mr Aslin’s brother Nathan Wood said: ‘People should not believe anything the Russians say or are making my brother say. He is being held against his will and forced to say whatever they tell him to.
‘Anything that comes out of my brother’s mouth now, and the mouths of his Russian captors, are lies.’
Both Pinner and Aslin are believed to have been captured while fighting with Ukrainian soldiers to defence Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine.
The city has seen the worst fighting of the seven-week-long war. Home to 400,000 people before Russia’s invasion, the city has been reduced to rubble by seemingly indiscriminate Russian shelling.
Russian forces have in recent days made advances in Mariupol with Moscow claiming on Wednesday that its troops had taken control of the final Ukrainian strongholds in the city including the Azovstal industrial complex, where Kyiv’s forces have been holed up in a hellish last stand for several days.
But Ukrainian marines who have teamed up with the Azov regiment to defend Mariupol yesterday appeared in a video to rebuff the claims as they denounced more than 1,000 fellow soldiers who surrendered to Russian forces on Wednesday and vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to protect the city.
A view shows the gates of the Illich Steel and Iron Works damaged during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 15, 2022
Over 20,000 civilians are believed to have been killed, tens of thousands remain trapped in the city, and countless numbers have fled. It is one of a number of sites were international investigators believe war crimes have taken place – including the bombing of a maternity war and of a theatre sheltering hundreds of people.
Amid fears that Mariupol could soon fall under complete Russian control, Ukraine said on Friday that it was still trying to break the siege of the city, as fighting raged around the city’s massive steel works and port.
If Moscow captures Mariupol, it would be the only big city to fall to the Russians so far. Russia’s defence ministry said it had captured the city’s Illich steel works. The report could not be confirmed.
Ukrainian defenders are mainly believed to be holding out in Azovstal, another huge steel works. Both plants are owned by Metinvest.
‘The situation in Mariupol is difficult and hard. Fighting is happening right now. The Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city,’ defence ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told a televised briefing, although he said the Russians have not completely captured it.
Motuzyanyk said Russia had used long-range bombers to attack Mariupol for the first time since its Feb. 24 invasion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he discussed the fate of the besieged port city of Mariupol in a meeting on Friday with the country’s military leaders and the heads of its intelligence agencies.
‘The details cannot be made public now, but we are doing everything we can to save our people,’ Zelensky said in his nightly video address to the nation.
A local resident crosses a street damaged during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 15, 2022
On Friday, it was alleged that Russian troops in Mariupol are digging up thousands of dead civilians and burning their bodies in mobile crematoriums in a possible bid to destroy evidence of atrocities like the ones discovered in Bucha and other towns outside Kyiv when the Russians withdrew from the region.
Mariupol’s city council – in a post on Telegram – said Moscow’s men were exhuming bodies buried in residential courtyards within the city and were assigning watchmen to each square to stop locals from reburying their dead friends and relatives.
‘Why the exhumation is being carried out and where the bodies will be taken is unknown,’ the council said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app.
On Thursday, Mayor Vadym Boychenko warned corpses ‘carpeted the streets’ of Mariupol as he accused Moscow of incinerating tens of thousands of civilians killed during a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating.
