The bodies of 210 Ukrainian fighters killed in the final battle to save Mariupol have been returned, as Russian proxies in the occupied Donetsk region began their show trial against three foreign fighters taken captive amid heavy fighting in the besieged port city in April.
British citizens Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner were trotted out before a judge in the Donetsk People’s Republic’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, along with Moroccan citizen Ibrahim Saadun. A brief video released by Russia’s RBC news agency showed all three seated behind bars in the courtroom as a judge noted that none of the five witnesses against them had bothered to show up.
Russian proxies in the occupied region have labeled all three men “mercenaries” and said they may face the death penalty, even though they were all officially integrated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine and had lived in the country for years prior to the Feb. 24 invasion, according to the independent news outlet Mediazona.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry has refused to recognize the three as combatants in the war, and as such, claimed they are not protected under international humanitarian law. Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said they face a “long prison term.”
The trial against the three appears to be part of Russia’s campaign to shift blame for war crimes in the decimated city onto those fighting for Ukraine; Ukrainian citizens who were forcibly transported to Russia through “filtration camps” have been hauled in for questioning by Russian investigators who force them to provide testimony confirming “Ukraine’s war crimes,” according to volunteers and lawyers cited in independent Russian media reports at the end of May.
Denis Pushilin, the separatist leader of occupied Donetsk, claimed this week that “the crimes [Pinner, Aslin, and Saadun] committed were monstrous.” The prosecutor general’s office run by Russian proxies in the occupied region said “current law” dictates that the captives may be sentenced to “an exceptional measure of punishment—the death penalty.”
In a statement released through the British Foreign Office on Tuesday, Aslin’s family said they are enduring a “very sensitive and emotional time” and noted they are working with Ukrainian authorities and the Foreign Office to have the 28-year-old returned home.
“Aiden is a much-loved man and very much missed, and we hope that he will be released very soon,” the family said.
The “trial” against the men commenced as Ukrainian authorities confirmed the return of the bodies of 210 Ukrainian defenders who spent weeks fending off Russian forces in the city. Most of them had been holed up in the Azovstal steel plant under relentless Russian bombing, a last stand to save the city.
In addition to those killed, Russian forces have also taken more than 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the Azovstal plant as prisoners of war, with Ukrainian authorities currently involved in negotiations to have them returned.
Russia’s TASS news agency cited law-enforcement sources on Tuesday to say an additional 1,000 Ukrainian and foreign fighters who surrendered in Mariupol have been transported to Russia to face questioning, though there was no immediate confirmation of that from the Ukrainian side.
Meanwhile, the families of Ukrainian soldiers held captive in Russia have said they’re being bombarded with violent threats from unknown people calling them from Russian phone numbers.
“They’re calling from Russian numbers, sending messages on Telegram, WhatsApp, other messaging services, they mock and threaten,” Yulia Fedosyuk, the wife of a captive Azovstal defender, told Ukrainska Pravda.
“We got to your husband and we’ll get to you too, soon our guys will be in Kyiv,” she recalled one of the unidentified people saying, along with threats of “rape and death.”
“This has been going on for a month now. Ever since we met with the pope, we’ve been getting attention. After that, they began to call Telegram and send messages that my husband was already supposedly dead; about whether I want to see his photo or video. Things like that,” she said.
