By Charley Adams
BBC News
September 25, 2022
A British man released by Russia has said he was “treated worse than a dog” and kept in solitary confinement for five months.
Aiden Aslin has returned to the UK after being detained for months following his capture by Russian-backed forces in Ukraine.
Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, he said after being stabbed he was asked if he wanted a quick or “beautiful death”.
He said the prisoners had to sing the Russian national anthem every morning.
“And if you didn’t sing it, you would get punished for it. You would get beaten,” he said.
In the interview, the former prisoner said he was stabbed during his time being held captive – and beaten because of his tattoos.
Ten detainees, including Mr Aslin, were released on Wednesday evening after Saudi Arabia said it had brokered an exchange between Russia and Ukraine.
Among them were five British nationals who were freed – including John Harding, Dylan Healy, Andrew Hill and Shaun Pinner.
Mr Aslin from Newark, Nottinghamshire was held in April while fighting in the south-eastern city of Mariupol.
He, Mr Pinner and a Moroccan national, Brahim Saadoun, were put on trial in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and told they faced the death penalty.
Referring to a time he was stabbed in the back with a knife, Mr Aslin said: “I knew there was a very high possibility I was about to be killed.”
He was then asked by a Russian who was guarding him: “Do you want a quick death or a beautiful death?”
Answering a quick death, Mr Aslin was told: “You’re going to have a beautiful death and I’m going to make sure it’s a beautiful death.”
He said he was beaten for having a tattoo of a Ukrainian trident and for one showing his time in Syria.
Mr Aslin said he was kept in a two-man cell with four people and had to sleep on a mat infested with lice.
“We couldn’t go to the toilet properly because we didn’t have a toilet”, he said, adding that they had to use empty bottles.
Mr Aslin said he survived for three weeks eating pieces of bread and water – and “eventually we had to beg them to give us tap water”.
There was a window in the cell, but it had “nothing to protect us from the outside elements” he said, which led to it being cold in the winter.
Talking about when his passport was checked, “as soon as I said Great Britain I got a straight punch to the nose” he said.
Mr Aslin said the only time he was let out was to do propaganda or take phone calls.
There needs to be a response to this.
Rabid orc torturers brutalize our boys, whilst orc prisoners get 5* treatment.
Orcs who provide valuable intel, show contrition and demonstrate that they are anti-putler should continue to get the 5* treatment.
All the rest should be treated in exactly the same vile way that they treat ours.
I really doubt that Orcs are getting a 5 star treatment.
Probably they aren’t being tortured (although I doubt the SBU will be very kind to POW’s if they refuse to tell valuable information), but because there are so many POW’s while Ukraine already had limited prison capacity and prisons that are in a deplorable state, from Soviet times or even before, you shouldn’t think they are having a good time.
Ukrainian prisons often lack windows and because there are so many prisoners there are probably more prisoners in each cell than they were designed for, probably multiple times. Also often they do not have hot water or proper toilets.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-detention-center/29067856.html
This is a picture of a Ukrainian prison.
Also it is not unlikely there are a lot of improvised prisons, for example in a factory or other facility as the prison capacity does not support POW’s.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming Ukraine for it because there simply isn’t any money to build better prisons. At least I think Ukraine does feed them properly and they probably have access to medical care.
I think it is very important that Ukraine treats POW’s properly, as Ukraine is a civilised and humane country and they should always remain like this. Even though I like to use the word “Orcs” and I often say some things I want to do to Russians like a true psychopath, we should keep in mind that many soldiers, especially those recruited from the occupied area’s, could be literally taken from a bus and sent to the frontlines. Good luck trying to desert if you are with 10 other Russian soldiers in a trench. And if you aren’t killed by Russian (or Ukrainian fire) while trying to escape, they could still go after your wife or kids that are still in occupied territory.
And even if you are a Russian soldier that believes Putin, can you really blame him if he is from some remote village, without access to the internet, proper education and only hearing Kremlin propaganda for decades?
I think it is better for them to learn that Ukraine is a civilised nation and to learn the truth than to return to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange and become an even more emboldened Putin supporter.
Lastly, it should be more attractive to Russians to lay down their arms and surrender than being cannon fodder for Putin. The absence of stories of Russians being tortured in Ukraine probably makes it more likely that for example the Russian soldiers that are now encircled in Kherson to surrender.
Quite frankly, I hope that the ruskie prisoners are suffering as much as the Ukrainian counterparts. They are the invaders and not the Ukrainian ones. And, God have mercy on those ruskies who had committed crimes! That’s my personal view.
Dogs, like any animal, should never be treated bad, so this is a bad title.
At any rate, the ruskies are inhuman scum. They’ve always been and will perhaps always be.