Moscow confirms the capture of two American soldiers
Two Americans, captured in Ukraine while fighting with the kyiv armed forces, “endangered” Russian soldiers and must be “held responsible for these crimes”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday in an interview with the American channel NBC News. This is the first comment from the Kremlin on the case of these two former American soldiers, Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, according to NBC.
“They are mercenaries and they were involved in illegal activities on the territory of Ukraine”, said Dmitry Peskov, in English. Asked about the nature of the crimes charged against the two Americans, Dmitri Peskov admitted that the characteristics of their offenses were not yet known, ensuring however that they were not covered by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war.
The two men “are not in the Ukrainian army, so they are not subject to the Geneva Conventions”he argued.
The circumstances under which the two former servicemen are being held, and who is holding them, are unclear. Mr. Peskov merely said that they were in the hands of the “authorities”. On whether they face the death penalty, the Russian spokesperson said: “It depends on the investigation”.
Additionally, the magazine Rolling Stone reported on Monday that a second US citizen was killed fighting in Ukraine after stepping on a mine. A funeral notice for Stephen Zabielski, 52, was published in early June on a newspaper’s website in Florida and indicates that he died on May 15 in the Zaporizhia region (east). A 22-year-old former Marine, Willy Joseph Cancel, had already been killed in Ukraine in April.