voice-over: this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. in war, not all soldiers are fighting on or for their own soil. thanks to the internet, it has become easier than ever before for foreigners to immerse themselves in conflicts very far from home. my guest today is a young british man, aiden aslin, who has a remarkable story. hejoined the ukrainian army. he was captured, tortured and sentenced to death by putin's forces. he survived thanks to a prisoner swap. but why did he risk everything in someone else�*s war? aiden aslin, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. it is just over a year since you were released from captivity after being held by the pro—russian forces in occupied donetsk. looking at you, your physical scars have healed. what about your mental scars? erm, definitely my physical scars have definitely healed or, like, i'm now a lot bigger compared to when i was released. i'm sure everyone would remember the images. i was a lot skinnier than i am now. but i think mentally, you know, i'm mentally better than i was, especially, like, just coming out of captivity. erm, but as most people can probably observe,

like, i still have, like, a lot of issues mentallyjust dealing with going back out into the big wide world after going through what we did go through. i am wondering how a youth in his late teens turning 20 could become so fixated on fighting in other people's wars. because that's what happened. pretty much, erm, and i think...| think, like, the important thing to realise is...is that, like, my childhood, like, when i was growing up, i never...never had any aspirations to go into any sort of conflict or military setting. like my sole goal in life was to grow up, become a police officer. that was like my goal, like, my career ambition. but it wasn't until 2014 when around that time we saw the gradual unfolding that was going on in iraq and syria. we had, like, erm, isis that was starting

to grow bigger and bigger, the atrocities that they started to commit. i remember watching these, like, images that were coming. i think...| think the one that struck out to me the most was back in sinjar when itv werejoining an iraqi helicopter that was going to the top of the mountain to deliver humanitarian aid to the yazidis that were hiding at the top from isis. and i remember seeing the images that were coming out from the yazidis that were trying to climb on board because they faced, like, death, they were pretty much running from death. and it was at that moment, i thought to myself that in principle, like, i like to hold, like, a pretty moral, like, regard to how people should be treated and when we should help people and when we shouldn't. and it was at that moment that i decided that i could either continue to moan about what i'm seeing, be frustrated about this, that no—one is doing anything to help them, or at least i can stand by my principles, go out there and at least show them

that they're not forgotten about. and what you did was ultimately through the internet and a bunch of connections that you made, you ended up in the group known as the ypg — kurdish fighters on northern syrian territory who were taking on so—called islamic state. you'd never held a gun in your life at this point? no. so i came from a civilian background. i worked security on, like, on nightclubs as well as working in a support worker environment, working with autistic adults. so for me to go from that to, like, that environment, quite a big and crazy step. did you think to yourself, "aiden, am i really ready to kill someone, to use this gun?" i remember thinking to myself at the time when i got there, i got into syria. i was like, "ok, i'm now in syria." like, "is this what...is this what i came here for?" and i knew 100% with myself that when you go to a war, like, the whole point of doing

this is at some point you're going to be expected to...to kill someone if it happens. so i had come to terms with that, like, reality and also talked to myself, like, reasoned with it. so i knew at one moment in time there may be occasion, an occasion where i will be forced to pull the trigger on another human life. and my...my point of view was, if it's in defence of someone that can't do that, then so be it. you've written a memoir, putin's prisoner. you write very frankly. you say, "my panic attacks became so great that i had to take a break from the war." and you ended up, of course, back in the uk. you'd seen terrible things. you'd had this horrific experience. you're still only in your early twenties. yeah. and yet... and yet you then, within a year or two, decide to go to ukraine

and join the ukraine army. i tried to go back to a normal life and frankly speaking, like, when you see those kind of things, like, the atrocities, like, during my time in syria, i saw mass graves that isis has created. i saw a lot of things that the normal person shouldn't see. erm, so when i did go back, i did try to, like, get back to a normal life. but for me, i struggled a lot after that because after everything i saw, like, itjust wasn't right for me tojust go back, like, work a normal day—to—dayjob. you see, this gets to the heart of what i find so interesting about you. and notjust you, but there are hundreds, thousands of foreigners who do sign up for causes, for wars of which they're not fighting for their own soil. they're fighting for someone else�*s soil. i'm just wondering also whether there comes a point where there is an addiction to fighting, to the adrenaline, to the excitement. erm...

i wouldn't say there's an addiction. i'd say especially at least in my experience with going to ukraine, when i chose to go there, i knew what the situation was. i knew that the so—called separatists in the east were backed by the russian military. and i discovered, like, pretty much in late 2017 that you could join the ukrainian military officially, like, in a legal process as a foreigner. you could sign up for three years. yeah. so you could sign up for three years. when you complete that, you could then take your citizenship. and for me, that was the ideal. you wanted that. yeah. you wanted to become a full—fledged ukrainian? yeah. so after that, after syria, and like everything else that i detailed in the book about when...when i did return to the uk, for me, the best benefit i could do to get back to a normal life was emigrate to a new country. i could either...| could either try and go through a more difficult process of emigrating to a country and going through the long process of eventually taking citizenship.

but again, it goes back to my principles and morals, like, if you want to emigrate to another country then you should give something back to that country in return. so by 2022, you are still in the army, you're now very committed to this land and you find yourself serving when vladimir putin launches that full—scale invasion. and at that point, when it becomes ukraine is in an existential war, you find yourself in the marines on the front line near mariupol, which is the port which saw some of the most brutalfighting. were you very scared? i'd say you'd be a fool to say you weren't scared, erm, because you understand what's coming. like this...this isn't going to be syria, where it's, like, pretty low scale, conventional, like, militia type fighting. this is going to be full spectrum, like, everything's going to be thrown at you.

so we were...we were pretty well aware of what was coming. and you're a brit caught up in this. yeah. and i'm just wondering, honestly, whether moments before you finally got captured, when you thought to yourself, "aiden, i'm british, i don't need this." yeah, so... "i've got to run away." so i knew being british, i'm going to be picked up, like, really easily. so we were in the illich steelworks, which is north of the city. the azovstal one, which was, like, more known, was, like, to the south. but by that point we'd been cut off and throughout this whole siege, like, we'd been preparing the vehicles to try and make a breakfor ukrainian lines. however, the first night that we tried that, for some reason it was cancelled. and then the second day, that's when the russians just hit us with everything they had, they destroyed all our, like, trucks that were loaded with our ammunition, our supplies. and, you know, by this point, like, what else is there left? like, what do we do? because now we have no supplies. you were...you were part of a very significant force that surrendered.

yeah. and within 48 hours of being taken into captivity, you were subjected to really very serious physical abuse. definitely. and i think i wouldn't say so much the worst part in the way i look at it, like, i knew what was going to happen, like to a degree, just before i surrendered, because i had that opportunity to use the starlink system, which is the internet satellite that we had. i knew the best thing that i could do is take a... a pre surrender video just to tell people what's going to happen to us. did you imagine, as you did that pre surrender video that, "my mother is going to watch this"? i actually sent it to her. so i said to her, like after i'd spoken to her, like, "just make this as public as possible." because my fear at that point was that i wouldn't be alive in the next 2a hours. i was expecting to just be executed because i had... i had already seen the videos and rumours of what wagner were doing to ukrainian soldiers.

the abuse was a beating. you also ended up being stabbed? yeah. where were you stabbed? just on the left shoulder. you survived all of that. but you do say, and you're very honest about your mindset through all of this, you say again that you tried to put up defensive walls in your mind, and the scale of the violence that was meted out on you, it sort of caved in those walls. yeah. so when i think back to the moment when i was being beaten, i think one of the things that strikes out to me, at least from what i remember, i don't remember, like, crying but i remember screaming. er, and when it did stop and over time, from that moment when...when he showed me that he stabbed me, it was at that moment where, like, everything just caved in, like, because i expected to be beaten. i just didn't expect to be stabbed. and then over time, like throughout the rest

of captivity, i couldn't... i had no thought process and like being able to cry even when i wanted to cry. this is difficult stuff to talk about. it's also very important stuff to talk about because the context of this is that there have been a whole series of allegations of abuses by russian forces. your story is just one of many different forms of abuse, but you say that yours has a unique quality because of the nature of the evidence you can present. by that you mean a video that was taken after this abuse you say you experienced... yeah. ..which could be compared with that pre—surrender video you'd made. yes. so again, like, going back to the pre—surrender video, that was one of the greatest decisions that i think i've made in my life, because if i hadn't have made that video, no—one would have known of what i looked like before i went into captivity.

unfortunately for the decision—makers in the... in the interrogation chambers inside russia, they decided to do what they did and then put me on film, like, 42 hours later, whichjust showed to the whole world of, like, how russian captivity actually is. so for me, like, as much as i suffered throughout that and because of... i suffered more because i made that video. in the long run, now that i'm free, i'm able to present that as evidence to...to the courts when it's applicable. you, in the end, were held for, what, between four and five months? er, again, it's difficult. but you say you did go through the toughest of times when you thought about ending your own life. yeah. and i think... ..it seems to me the worst thing that you experienced wasn't even about your own body, about physical abuse on you. it was being right next... in the cell next to an individual who had been brought in...

..and was beaten to death. yeah. and i try to tell people, like, for me, i'm not a very... like, especially previously before the invasion, after everything i've already witnessed... like in total in syria, i probably lost around, like, 30 friends that i personally knew and a lot more closer friends. so after that i became a lot more numb to that sort of, like, emotion. and even after, like, mariupol and everything else and even captivity, i can happily talk about, like, how i was beaten and everything. but for me, the most traumatic is...is being in the... when i...when i put myself back into that room where i could hear someone be beaten to death. for me, that's like my most traumatic moment. and that's when i do get emotional because i think the hardest thing for me to accept is...is like, yes, like, i witnessed it. but at the same time, i still don't know what his name was. and for me, that's like very, like, traumatic because, like, ijust don't know his name.

see, your honesty through all of this is...is very striking because you basically talk about feelings of guilt and shame and you say that you plumbed the depths of your own cowardice. and you say that because of some of the things you said. yeah. some of the things that, frankly, you were forced, required to say by your captors on videotape. and bizarrely, one of your inquisitors who calls himself a journalist was actually a british citizen. yeah. who clearly has chosen to work inside russia. it clearly upsets you, some of the things you said, and indeed your guilty plea to notjust being a mercenary, which actually you weren't. yeah. because you'd chosen to make your life in ukraine and you signed up to

the regular army. but you also pleaded guilty to trying to bring down the donetsk people's republic, which carried a death sentence. yeah. so, i mean, this is the other thing, like, with especially with the. . .the so—called journalist, as you saw in the video, like, he asked me, like, whatam i? and i was compelled to say i'm a mercenary. and then he told me that the death sentence for the mercenary... he told me the mercenary charge is the death sentence. however, that wasn't the case. we would later come to learn in court that the actual punishment for the death sentence was the trying to seize power, which we weren't aware of. yeah, to overthrow the so—called people's republic. but i'm still struggling to understand why you... ..you know, were so angry with yourself, why you felt that you'd exhibited this cowardice. because nobody listening to this would judge you in any way as behaving

in a cowardly fashion. i think...| think a lot of it is with the amount of times i was taken out that built to this. so there's a lot of my friends that i've seen where i've seen them put into front... in front of a video camera and they're basically forced to say stuff but for them... like, some of them will only do it, like, a few times, maybe once. but with me, i was pretty much taken out, like, five times a week in the very few first months, and it just became a pattern. and then over time, i was becoming conditioned to the way i was being taken out. so psychologically i'd be going into these sessions, but i'd be looking normal but deep down, like, i was pretty much losing my mind because of what they were doing to me. having been given a death sentence, having this notion of execution hanging over you, you then were released because a deal was done,

a much wider geopolitical deal was being done in which the release of you as a british citizen was tied to the ukrainians releasing viktor medvedchuk, who was a friend of putin. yeah. roman abramovich and the saudi government were involved. you ended up being flown out of russia to freedom. let's talk about a couple of issues since then. one is you've talked about justice. you've talked about your dream of meeting that prison guard who stabbed you at the international criminal court in the hague. do you really believe that justice can be done? ideally, that's my dream. but realistically, like many things that we've seen in previous conflicts, like, it is anything buta dream. we only need to look at the conflict in the balkans

to see who was prosecuted and who was let go. so i think at the end of this conflict, when it does end, there's going to be something similar to that and people will be let go in...in exchange for the higher—ups that made the decisions. there are thousands of allegations, as i said earlier, facing russian leadership and russian forces on the ground as a result of what they have done in ukraine. there are also allegations of crimes committed by ukrainian forces. there's no sense, i think, of equivalence. yeah. but nonetheless, it is important that if justice is to be done, it's to be done on both sides. so be honest with me. did you see crimes being committed when you were serving with the ukrainian forces? not...not when i was in service, i've never seen anything. i've seen videos, like, through social media. however, i think in...in reality, like, it's...

it's... it doesn't make sense to say there's no war crimes, like, from one side or the other because war is war, like, as they say, war is hell. er, so there will always be war crimes on whichever side, regardless of the circumstances. and i think the most important aspect to understand is... is there's most definitely individual cases. however, from what i've seen on the russian side, it's systematic. like, three weeks ago, i was in geneva to speak at the united nations human rights council on a side event and i spoke about my experience. and while i was there, i was listening to the mounting allegations against russia and the other countries that were speaking up in this regard. and they themselves had said, like, in the reports that the un had conducted, that they had found war crimes on the ukrainian side. however, none of it is

systematic compared to the opposite side. i want to ask you, as we reflect on what you may have learned about the notion of people like you joining other people's wars as foreign fighters. would you say that, in the end, a lot of these foreign fighters, even the ones with the best of intentions, are a liability? i would say it's a bit of a 50/50, especially during the beginning of the full—scale invasion. there's a lot of people that came here with the wrong intentions that basically were just a liability to themselves. but i have seen and i have met a lot of people that have come out here with the best intentions, and they are doing things that... that are helping the cause. were you a good soldier or were you at times a liability? i would say i was a good soldier. i was there for, like, four years. i got on. the only thing that i failed as a soldier was getting captured. another thought —

you have made it plain you see your future in ukraine. do you worry, as a former soldier and somebody who knows the soldiers, that despite the spirit and defiance of ukraine, this is becoming a war too costly that they cannot win? i think ukraine can win as long as the west continues its support. before the invasion, like, myself and others that were in my unit, we'd always said that the ukrainians were going to give a bloody nose to the russians if they invaded, and they've done a lot more than that. but at the same time, with how big this conflict is, i think if support for the west...from the west stops, then we will be looking at a very possible reality that eventually ukrainian forces will be forced to lose by attrition. under the rules of your release, you are not supposed to go back to the front line and fight. i just wonder whether there

is a part of you that would like to, might even contemplate going back to fight? there... there's always a part of me that would like to go back. a lot of my ukrainian friends that are released, a lot of them will go back to serving in the military. some of them will end up going back to the front line out of their choice. but if we go back, obviously, the geneva convention states that if you're taken into captivity a second time, you won't have those protections. so if...if russia wanted to, they could decide to just shoot you. will you do it or not? no, no. my...my voice is a lot more powerful on... on a platform, being able to peak about ukraine and spread awareness about the conditions that our guys are still serving in the prisons in donetsk and elsewhere. you have said, "i would do it all again. no regrets." i'm struggling to believe you really mean that. i would definitely do it again. it's hard for people to understand. had i not done it, i wouldn't

have the friends, i would never have met my fiancee. like, my vast network of friends and family that i now have. and you wouldn't have the trauma, you wouldn't have the scars, you wouldn't have the stab wound. it... it's always, like, when... even when you go into any sort of military, like, that's pretty much an accepted risk that you take, quite a lot different to civilian work. but... you can say that. for me, i accepted that as...as a risk. aiden aslin, thank you very much for talking to me on hardtalk. thank you. hello there. the weather should be calming down a bit now. it'll take a while for the floodwaters to recede,

but the winds have dropped. earlier on tuesday, we had a gust of 81mph at exeter airport, then the strong winds moved into the southeast with a gust of 69mph at heathrow airport. well, that's storm henk, and it's now tracking its way into europe. it'll bring some snow in scandinavia — it's very cold here. this low pressure is not a storm, but it will bring some showers. the more persistent rain has cleared away, mind you, but we have seen a lot of flooding just recently. the heaviest rain actually fell over the hills of wales — that's fed into the river systems in the west midlands and, a short while ago, there were over 200 flood warnings on rivers in england. these are the temperatures we're looking at for the start of wednesday — not too cold out there, typically 5—6 celsius. we've still got some more persistent rain in the far northeast of scotland, could be a bit wintry up in shetland, some strong winds for a while here. some strong winds, too, blowing through the english channel, in the southwest of england. not as windy as it was on tuesday. and elsewhere, it'll be a mixture of sunshine and showers, maybe some more frequent showers coming back into scotland, pegging

the temperatures back a bit here. those numbers a little bit lower than we had on tuesday, but not by a great deal. now, this low pressure will still sit to the west of scotland as we head into thursday. this feature here is causing us a few headaches, the track seems to be changing a little — it's now moving a little furthersouth, more into northern parts of france. there is the threat of some rain coming through the channel islands and into the far southeast of england. otherwise, a fairly quiet day, more in the way of sunshine, fewer showers, still some cloudy, damp, and breezy weather into the far northeast of scotland. temperature—wise, we're looking at around 8—9 celsius typically, so it is beginning to get a little bit cooler, and that trend will continue as we head towards the weekend. we are going to find, instead of low pressure around, though, pressure will rise — now it's low pressure that's brought all the wet weather recently and all the flooding, but high pressure will build in in time for the weekend. that'll bring in some colder air, may get a northeasterly breeze for a while, but certainly a change in weather type is on the way eventually.

some much—needed dry weather to come as we head towards the weekend and into next week. it does mean, however, it will be colder, generally dry with some sunshine, but we're likely to have some frost at night. goodbye.

live from london, this is bbc news. lebanon accuses israel of trying to ignite conflict across the middle east after a deputy leader of hamas was killed in beirut. an investigation is underway injapan following yesterday's collision between a passenger and transport plane at tokyo's haneda airport which left five people dead. heavy rain, aftershocks and the risk of landslides complicate rescue efforts injapan in the wake of monday's deadly earthquake which has now killed 62 people. the longest strike in the history of the nhs starts today asjunior doctors in england take part in a six—day walkout over a pay dispute.