A British man who fought for Ukraine before being taken prisoner by Russian forces is due to speak at the United Nations about the plight of others who are being held captive.

Aiden Aslin is heading to Geneva where he will voice his concern for comrades who have disappeared in Moscow’s shadowy detention system after being seized 17 months ago.

Aslin was sentenced to death after being one of the more than 1,000 Ukrainian troops who surrendered at the end of the month-long siege of the Illich steelworks in Mariupol.

He has since described how he was repeatedly interrogated, tortured, stabbed and forced to film pro-Russian propaganda videos, even while visibly injured and in handcuffs.

The military aid volunteer is due to speak alongside another former Ukrainian prisoner of war (PoW) at the UN’s Human Rights Council, scheduled to take place in the Swiss city early next week.

‘The speech I have prepared will tell them about what we experienced and why the West needs to do more to pressure Russia into obeying the Geneva Convention which they signed,’ he said.

‘The main message is that there are still a lot of Ukrainians who are in captivity and Russia is refusing to give them access to the Red Cross.

‘There are a lot of families who are being kept in the dark and don’t know if their loved ones are alive. All they know is that they were captured but since then there has not been any outside access.

‘It’s been 17 months since people were captured in Mariupol and a lot of families don’t know where they are and if they are still alive.

‘They don’t know if their health is good or if they have died in captivity and their bodies will be returned to Ukraine in a body exchange.

‘My main goal is to encourage the United Nations to do what it can to pressure Russia to acknowledge its commitments to the Geneva Convention and basic humanitarian laws designed to ensure PoWs are free from harm and humiliation. At the very minimum the families should at least have access to their loved ones.’

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Aslin, 29, fought with the Ukrainian marines from the outset of Vladimir Putin’s all-out attack in February 2022 before the remnants of the defending forces were besieged under heavy bombardment at the steelworks as supplies ran out.

He spent six months in captivity before being exchanged in a prisoner swap, a time when he says he was treated to routine brutal treatment and sentenced to death by a kangaroo court in the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic.

He has described being turned into a ‘propaganda zombie’ in his book, ‘Putin’s Prisoner’.

Aslin, originally from Nottingham, returned to the UK after his release before moving back out to Ukraine, where he now lives in the west of the country with his fiancée, Diana Okovyta.

He has been volunteering for a project based in Estonia that sources and delivers jeeps to frontline units, and has clocked up 10,000 km on the road in a few months.

The former infantryman has promised his fiancée that he will not return to the frontline — where he would be a high-value target for the enemy — and is instead providing material support to the military and acting as a public voice for Ukraine, including through his X channel.

His work has included long hauls on the road for the NAFO 69th Sniffing Brigade, a non-profit organization which is raising international support for military-grade trucks supplied to Ukrainian forces.

The volunteer said on X today that ‘my entire battalion and my company still remain in captivity’, with most ‘being hidden from the outside world while Russia continues its path of war crimes’.

He spoke to Metro.co.uk as his adopted homeland’s counter-offensive grinds on amid repeated calls for Western nations to speed up the flow of modern arms such as long-range missile systems.

Aslin summed up his feelings about his return to Ukraine as he prepared to head from the country by road to Geneva this afternoon.

‘The main emotions I’m feeling are anger and frustration because the West has allowed Russia to do this,’ he said. ‘While the delivery of the Western weapons is appreciated, I don’t think we are doing enough to help Ukraine win this as effectively with the time constraints we are looking at.

‘As good as it is that the West is giving stuff, the reality is that we are being drip-fed weapons we could have used from the very beginning.

‘With the counter-offensive, it’s taking its time and while there is progress, the amount of time it took to plan and get organized with what we’ve got allowed the Russians to dig in and prepare for the offensive.

‘If the West had given Ukraine F-16s and everything it needed last year, we could have trained Ukrainian pilots by now and they would be flying in the counter-offensive. They have only just recently approved the supply of the jets, so now Ukrainians are going through the F-16s training and we are looking at getting those sometime next year.’

While major tranches of military aid worth billions of US dollars at a time have been sent by the West to Ukraine, the hard-fought offensive being conducted by Kyiv’s troops to the east and south is encountering deep lines of fortifications as the bitter winter months close in.

A former British air assault infantry captain, Dr Patrick Bury, told Metro.co.uk this week that the ‘salami slicing’ of military aid is due to hesitancy among Western nations in the face of Putin’s nuclear rhetoric.

While the allies have made step-changes to more advanced weapons, such as tanks, fighter jets and missile systems, they have generally lagged months behind Kyiv’s requests.

Aslin, who permanently moved back to Ukraine in August, still feels his place is at the frontline as he supports the pushback from a distance.

He is due to set off for Geneva today, heading for the 54th regular session of the Human Rights Council at the UN’s Palais des Nations office.

‘From my personal point of view I question why I should stay back while my friends and everyone I served with will go back to the frontline,’ Aslin said.

‘There is a lot of self-conscious frustration because I have this opportunity.

‘If I do go back there is a higher risk of me or Shaun [Pinner, another former British fighter for Ukraine] being killed straight away, just because of the publicity of being captured the first time.

‘So there is definitely a lot of frustration but I also know that I can now use the platform that came out of the situation to help Ukrainians and also to help advocate for my friends and everyone else who is still in captivity.’

Overall, at least 4,000 people have disappeared in Ukraine since the start of the all-out attack, according to Tribunal for Putin, a coalition of organizations gathering information about suspected Russian war crimes.

At present, the most high-profile touchpoint for efforts to bring those responsible for abuses of human rights to justice is the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Putin and Russia’s children’s commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.

The ICC has acted to bring the suspects before The Hague for allegedly trafficking Russian children into Russia.

Aslin has repeatedly expressed his desire that the next time he sees his Kremlin-backed jailers and the associated propagandists who filmed him under duress will be at the court.

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