The Week in Ukraine - 4/30/22

An American citizen, Willy Joseph Cancel, was killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in Ukraine this week.  The 22-year-old was working for a private military contracting company when he was killed-- the company had sent him to Ukraine, and he was being paid while he was fighting there.  Cancel, a former U.S. Marine, signed up to work for the private military contracting company on top of his full-time job as a corrections officer in Tennessee. When the war began, the company, began searching for contractors to fight in Ukraine and Cancel agreed to go. “He wanted to go over because he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for, and he wanted to be a part of it to contain it there so it didn’t come here, and that maybe our American soldiers wouldn’t have to be involved in it,” Cancel’s mother, Rebecca Cabrera said.

A Ukrainian adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky compared Russian troops to ISIS militants after Putin's forces threatened to execute a captured soldier on video unless his mother paid a ransom.  Ukrainian soldier Novikov Alexey Antonovich, from Mariupol, said he was captured on April 23, and was part of the 109th brigade of the Donetsk territorial defense.  Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said video of the captured soldier showed Russia was a 'terrorist state'.  He said: 'The military is increasingly reminiscent of ISIS militants. Russia must be recognized as a terrorist state.'  He added the Russian soldiers threatened to send a video of his execution if they didn't receive the money. Footage showed the Ukrainian soldier being filmed as he was asked his name and how he was being treated.  The video was sent to the young soldier's mother with a demand of €5,000 if she wanted her son to remain alive. 

Two British volunteers providing humanitarian assistance in Ukraine were taken captive by the Russian military.  The non-profit Presidium Network said the men were detained at a checkpoint near the city of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine on Monday.  The two aid workers are believed to have been working independently, but were in touch with the Presidium Network.  They were said to be trying to rescue a family from a village south of Zaporizhzhia at the time of their capture.  Presidium Network's founder, Dominic Byrne said he was making an appeal on behalf of the captured men "to get the support we need from the UK government and from the international community, as well as on the ground".  Two other British men, Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, were captured earlier this month while fighting in the south-eastern city of Mariupol and shown on Russian state TV with apparent facial bruising.

Russia declared that it had taken “all of Mariupol.” this week, but in reality, hundreds of Ukrainians have been holding out in tunnels underneath Azovstal.  Azovstal, a vast complex of factories, buildings, sheds, scrapyards was one of the Soviet Union’s largest manufacturers of steel and other alloys through World War II, the Cold War, and into the present day.  The tunnels beneath Azovstal were designed to take a near-direct hit from a nuclear weapon. For the last two months, those tunnels and shelters have served their purpose, holding out against weeks of bombardment. Azovstal was built to be a shelter under the worst imaginable circumstances. Now those circumstances are here. And unless something changes soon in Mariupol, what started as a shelter will end as a tomb.

Elsewhere in Mariupol, the BBC reports that Russia has set up “filtration camps” at which local citizens are processed before being taken away to unknown locations within Russia. Some of the few to escape from those camps call conditions there “unimaginable.”  A 49-year-old resident named Oleksandr said, "It was like a true concentration camp."  Elderly people slept in corridors without mattresses or blankets. There was only one toilet and one sink for thousands of people. Dysentery soon began to spread.  Those suspected of being “Ukrainian Nazis” or who showed any sign of protest were taken away to be tortured or killed.  The filtration camps are like ghettos," a resident named Olena said. "Russians divide people into groups. Those who were suspected of having connections with the Ukrainian army, territorial defense, journalists, workers from the government - it's very dangerous for them. They take those people to prisons to Donetsk, torture them."