‘I was a British POW tortured by Russia; this is how Ukraine and the West can win this war’ | EUROtoday

Captured and sentenced to dying by Russia, tortured and a witness to warfare crimes, a younger man from Nottingham spent months ready for the executioner in a Russian jail, unable to cry.

“I so desperately wanted to, I was trying to force myself to let some emotion out,” he remembers. “But because I was too terrified in that place, I wasn’t able to cry. In five and a half months of captivity, I never cried once. There was moments where I wanted to, but I just physically couldn’t.”

This is Aiden Aslin, a survivor of Russian warfare crimes himself, talking to The Independent’s World of Trouble podcast.

His extraordinary life has taken him from working as a carer in Newark, Notts, to combating with Kurd militia in opposition to militants from the so-called Islamic State in Syria, to vicious road combating beneath air assault in Ukraine’s besieged Mariupol.

Post captivity, he’s now again in Zaporizhzhia in jap Ukraine and again within the Ukrainian military, which he joined earlier than Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Reflecting on his adopted nation’s probabilities of triumphing in Vladimir Putin’s brutal warfare which has floor on for practically 4 years, he’s optimistic.

“I think Russia can be beaten,” he says quietly. “I think we have got the means to exhaust their economy. Obviously, it is not an overnight thing. At some point it is going to give.

“People in Russia are saying that you should end this… The grasp is weakening. There are a lot of things showing that Russia is becoming a lot more destabilised.”

Aslin shouldn’t be alone in taking over in arms for a rustic not his personal. Thousands of international volunteers joined Ukraine’s battle after the Kremlin ordered troops to topple the democratically elected authorities in Kyiv and attempt to return Ukraine to the standing of a Russian colony.

But few had been a part of Ukraine’s forces earlier than Putin’s invasion. Aslin, now 31, was amongst those that had already answered a name that got here from inside to battle what they noticed as injustice.

He was first prompted to go away the UK to battle overseas when he noticed on tv the massacres of Yezidis by Isis extremists in Syria in 2014, who went on to try genocide in opposition to the group and enslave lots of of girls.

“I never had any interest in going to Syria. But this was a defining moment in my journey where I decided I could continue to stay at home or stand by my beliefs and morals and actually do something when other people won’t.

“I felt there was a sense of injustice that the West wasn’t doing enough to try and prevent the atrocities that were being committed.”

He joined the Kurdish Peshmerga; a ruthlessly environment friendly militia supported by the US, UK, France and others with particular forces troops, and bombers, within the battle in opposition to Isis.

After three years Aslin, a fight veteran on the age of 23, returned to the UK however by 2018 the sense of injustice that propelled him to Syria drove him to Kyiv – and a recruiting workplace the place officers had been “bewildered” by the arrival of a British volunteer.

After passing coaching, he joined Ukraine’s marines and acquired his marine parachute wings. By February 2022, he was manning a frontline place with Russian forces exterior the Ukrainian-held metropolis of Mariupol on the Black Sea coast when phrase got here {that a} full scale invasion had began. It was, he says, a “relief” after the ready.

But the sheer scale of the Putin advance meant his unit was pressured again into the Ilych steelworks, near the famed Avostal works the place different Ukrainian items had been making their final stand within the face of a Russian floor and air onslaught.

“You lived like mice, you stay underground as much as you can.” he says. “You try to avoid going above ground because of the aviation and artillery. But I remember in the first initial weeks of the encirclement we had a lot of artillery that we were shooting back at the Russians.”

Soon the Ukrainians and Aslin’s marine unit had been surrounded.

“The territory was getting smaller; it got to the point where we didn’t have anything to shoot back with. By the first week of April, one of the neighbouring units ended up surrendering, without telling us anything. And it just exposed our entire right flank.”

Surrender turned inevitable and when Aslin turned a prisoner of warfare he anticipated to be shot on the spot.

There had been instances when which will have felt like a launch from what was to observe: a British citizen accused by Russia of combating as a mercenary. On his seize he was crushed – and he knew worse would observe.

Taken to the Russian-occupied metropolis of Donetsk, he was confronted by a Russian in a blue uniform.

“He said something to me in Russian, and he had the thickest accent and stank of alcohol,” he remembers. “Me being me, I politely asked him if he could repeat what he said because I didn’t understand.

“As soon as I said that he beat me with a police baton. Initially I got hit across the forehead and then I fell to the floor, hit a few more times, and then I felt myself getting hit on my left shoulder.

“At the time I thought it hit me on my left shoulder, but it turned out it actually stabbed me.”

Weeks after which months of torture adopted. At one level a Russian interrogator stopped his assaults and lit a cigarette.

“He asked me, do I know who he is? And I was like, no. And he says, ‘I’m your death’. He asked ‘do you want a beautiful death or do you want a quick death?’ And obviously I wanted a quick death.

“And he said, ‘no, you’re going to have a beautiful death’. I was fully expecting to be murdered at that point. [But then] this Russian came in and said, ‘stop, stop, you’re going to kill him’ – I knew it must have been bad if his superior had to stop him.”

Accused of terrorism at a Russian courtroom martial, Aslin confronted a dying penalty if convicted, alongside fellow British volunteer Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Saadoune Brahim. They had been assigned a lawyer however knew they’d not get something near a good trial.

And within the run-up to the case being heard, Aslin started to crack.

Held in a pre-trial facility, beatings turned routine. On one event, Russian officers put baggage over the heads of the prisoners who they then pressured to crawl, roll and slither alongside the corridors whereas they had been thrashed.

Starved and saved in overcrowded cells, Aslin was pressured to be taught the Russian nationwide anthem and sing it each morning phrase good. When the guards shouted Putin’s title, they needed to arise of their cells and shout: “President of the world!”

At one stage throughout his incarceration, Aslin heard a person within the next-door cell being dragged out, crushed and tortured. As his physique weakened, the person’s screams pale. And when he was dragged again into his cell, the whipping continued however the sufferer fell silent.

Prisoners sharing the cell screamed for assist and shouted that the person was not respiratory. It took ten minutes for a guard to look in earlier than he then went away. Another ten minutes glided by and no physician or medic was summoned till it was too late – the prisoner was lifeless.

After a 3 day sham trial, Aslin was discovered responsible and the dying sentence was handed. Even then, depressed and bereft of hope having been despatched again to jail, he nonetheless couldn’t summon the emotional energy to cry. He was too afraid.

Unknown to him, Russia had realised there was worth in preserving this international prisoner alive. He was paraded for interviews with collaborators working for the Moscow media, together with the British propagandist Graham Phillips, now being investigated by the Met Police over alleged warfare crimes.

But this propaganda saved him partly protected. On movie, Aslin couldn’t seem too badly bruised.

The months glided by and he had no concept that he would find yourself on an inventory for POWs to trade. He, and others, had been swapped for Russian prisoners in a deal brokered by the intelligence providers of each side, and with the assistance of Saudi Arabia he was flown to the dominion in September 2022.

But it was not till he noticed British officers and knew he was secure that he may lastly shed a tear.

“I was able to cry and there was no fear of being beaten,” he says. “I was such a relief, emotionally and physically, because it it’s something I had been wanting to do for such a long time.”

Aslin returned to the UK, however his dwelling and his coronary heart remained in Ukraine.

He travelled to jap Ukraine in November 2023 and signed again up with the army in January 2024. He continues to serve in Ukraine’s armed forces, the place he’ll keep till the warfare is over.

Looking at historical past, he finds consolation for Ukraine within the examples of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union and even Napoleon: “On previous occasions throughout history, the defender has, most of the time, ended up winning.”