Shaun Pinner was part of the Ukrainian army when he was captured outside of Mariupol and tortured by Russian troops. Now, a year on from his release, he has written a book about being on the frontline and surviving 50 days of starvation. He spoke to Olivia Preston about life after the ordeal.
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00:00 I was a bit reluctant to write a book when I was asked.
00:02 My Colonel Richard Kemp came and said,
00:05 "Check on my wellbeing after I was released,"
00:08 and said, "Would you be interested in telling the story?"
00:10 And explained to me why I should tell the story
00:13 and why I shouldn't wait, but my friends are still captive.
00:16 And it was still very raw at the time,
00:20 but I wanted to get the story out there about Mariopole,
00:23 my love for Mariopole, where I met my wife and got married,
00:27 my time in the military.
00:29 And really tell the stories of the fight back
00:32 on the first day of the invasion back to Mariopole
00:35 and the prominent people in my life
00:37 who were with me at that time.
00:39 So I was able to do that about the fight back to Mariopole.
00:45 The several weeks we defended Mariopole,
00:48 including me, which resulted in me getting blown up
00:51 by a train IED.
00:52 And then going back to the position up until the point
00:58 we ran out of food and ammunition.
01:00 And then we're given a, told that we were gonna go
01:03 and try and join up with another unit 130 kilometers away.
01:07 We were abandoned in the position,
01:08 which was very hard to do, but Mariopole was just like,
01:11 it looked like something out of the Blitz.
01:14 My home on the left bank was destroyed
01:16 and the whole area was destroyed.
01:18 They bombed the theater, they were closing in around us.
01:21 So we escaped and evaded.
01:25 I got away for about two hours,
01:26 but on the escape and evasion, we were ambushed.
01:28 Everybody got split up and I was captured
01:31 about two hours outside Mariopole on my E&E.
01:35 And then subsequently, then I was interrogated,
01:39 stabbed in the leg, electrocuted, starved for 50 days.
01:44 And then you just keep going and going.
01:47 And then I was put on a propaganda trial,
01:51 which was a sham trial,
01:53 which we were not allowed to plead not guilty.
01:55 We were told that we had to plead guilty.
01:57 And then given a death penalty,
02:00 followed up by a real bizarre twist of fate
02:03 where I was negotiated in a prison swap
02:05 with Viktor Medvedchuk and some Russian officers
02:08 in a deal brokered by Roman Abramovich and the Saudi print.
02:12 Yeah, so it's about that part of it.
02:14 So it's quite, I was over there five years
02:18 before the invasion.
02:19 So I went over in 2018.
02:23 So just as it got to my five year point,
02:25 we were fighting in Mariopole.
02:28 So I'd married Ukrainian, I'm Russian,
02:31 learned Russian, not Ukrainian,
02:34 'cause most people in Mariopole spoke Russian to be fair.
02:37 My wife's a Russian speaking Ukrainian,
02:39 very proud Ukrainian.
02:41 So all those Russian narratives
02:43 about saving Russian speakers in Donbass
02:47 just didn't resonate 'cause all my Russian speaking
02:50 Ukrainian friends are now dotted around Europe.
02:53 They didn't want Russia to come in.
02:55 Mariopole's very much a Ukrainian city.
02:57 So we've had to move away from the center of Dnieper out
03:01 because our house was on the bank and near the bridges.
03:04 So we had to move further out into the country
03:06 'cause the rockets were coming in.
03:08 And that's quite a, you know,
03:10 it's not, I wouldn't say it's daily,
03:11 but you know, when they do hit and they come in, it's big.
03:14 So we've moved into a safer area.
03:16 The book's very therapeutic for it.
03:18 It's great to write it all down
03:20 and be able to tell the story.
03:21 A lot of my friends still can't tell the story, they're captive.
03:23 So it was one of the reasons I wrote the book
03:25 was because it's an obligation to, as a platform,
03:29 for me being British to be able to tell that story
03:32 and raise the profile of the, you know,
03:35 the inhumane treatment that Russia's given its POWs.
03:39 We've got a great timeline of from when I was first captured
03:44 to the emaciated state I looked like
03:47 when I went to the court trial.
03:49 I was down to about 60 kilograms.
03:52 Talk about it now with NATO and NATO troops
03:54 is again, for everything, I've talked it and talk and talk.
03:57 And I sleep like a baby.
03:58 I don't drink very much.
04:00 And, you know, I talk about my way of dealing with it,
04:03 how I've dealt with it so well,
04:05 because not everybody's got a good network,
04:07 family network that I've got.
04:09 I woke up this morning and we sort of,
04:11 I didn't realise how popular and interested people would be.
04:15 You never know.
04:15 At the end of the day, I'm telling a factual story
04:19 about what happened to us,
04:20 backed up by text messages, geolocations,
04:24 and even to an extent, the Russian propaganda machine
04:26 are really good at date, time and videos.
04:29 So all of our stuff is backed up by,
04:32 the story's backed up by information
04:34 and that, you know, the Russians just put out there.