British prisoner of war Aiden Aislin who endured an horrific ordeal at the hands of Putin’s army in Ukraine has recalled the brutal horrors inside Russian captivity.
The Ukranian volunteer has described how captures soldiers were forced to lean against the wall, hands tied behind their backs, in excruciating pain.
Aislin and his fellow POWs had no access to food or water, and the only sanitary facilities were two buckets. He recalls being singled out for abuse by his captors for having a British nationality and being forced to undergo a mock execution.
In Putin’s Prisoner: My Time As A Prisoner Of War In Ukraine, Mr Aislin recalls: “On the other side of the railway bridge we are greeted, in a manner of speaking, by an armed Russian soldier wearing a green balaclava. Two more Russians are covering him.
“I look around for the International Red Cross but I don’t see them. I am patted down by a soldier in the uniform of the Russian interior ministry troops. Once they’ve checked that we have no weapons on us, the abuse starts.
“It’s just verbal, to begin with. They call us ‘pederas’ or ‘peda’, Russian slang for paedophile or pederast. They tell us to ‘f*****g move it’ and we get on a bus. What’s so strange is that there are only a few of them.
“OK, they’re armed, but we outnumber them so we could conceivably capture the bus. But we all know our lines are too far away. If we make a run for it, we’ll be dog meat soon enough.”
The British fighter, who had previous combat experience in Syria, shared details of the Russian guards’ attempts to demean the prisoners by compelling them to sing the Russian national anthem and express their support for Vladimir Putin.
Almost every day, he experienced being forcefully taken out of his confinement and placed in front of a camera. During these interrogations, the Russians aimed to exploit Mr. Aslin for propaganda purposes, repeatedly asking him to renounce his support for Ukraine.
Additionally, he noted that members of the Azov Regiment, who were captured later during the Russian siege in Mariupol, endured even more severe beatings compared to the other prisoners, describing the treatment as horrific.
Mr Aslin’s book was serialised on Mail Online and said: “11 hours we are forced, on pain of being beaten, to stand with our head against a wall, our hands held behind our backs, or else. It’s painful enough for five minutes. For 11 hours it’s torture. We are given no food, no water. And the only toilets we can use are two buckets. Very soon, the place stinks to high heaven.
“There’s a constant commotion, shouting, people being called to the front to show their documents.”
He talks about being “punched in the nose” by a guard who asks where he’s from.
He adde he will “never forget the thump, thump, thump of the truncheon against the helpless soldier in the next cell.”.
“To hear someone being murdered in the next cell, and to be utterly helpless to prevent it, well, I would not wish that on my worst enemy. That killing was perhaps the lowest point of my time in captivity,” he added.
