US state media have reported that two British men have been captured by Moscow’s forces in separatist-occupied Ukraine and are accused of being mercenaries.
22-year-old Cambridgeshire aid worker Dylan Healy and military volunteer Andrew Hill have been accused of carrying out “mercenary activities,” officials in the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic said, Tass said.
The outlet reported that both men refused to cooperate with investigators.
It comes after a video shown on Russian television in April showed an English-accented man who appeared to give his name as Andrew Hill from Plymouth.
A pro-Kremlin website said Healy and Hill would face the same mercenary charges as Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, two British military volunteers captured in Mariupol and sentenced to death in Donetsk.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) intervened on Thursday in the case of Messrs Aslin and Pinner.
The Strasbourg court told Moscow it had to ensure that the death sentences imposed on Mr Aslin, 28, originally from Newark, Nottinghamshire, and Mr Pinner, 48, from Bedfordshire, are not carried out.
Mr Aslin and Mr Pinner lived in Ukraine before the invasion and the British government has insisted that as legitimate members of the Ukrainian armed forces they should be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.
It came after the government announced on Wednesday it would impose sanctions on Russia’s second-richest man, Vladimir Potanin, and Vladimir Putin’s cousin, Anna Tsivileva, in the latest round of measures against the Russian leader’s allies.
Mr. Potanin is the owner of the Interross conglomerate.
Ms. Tsivileva – Mr. Putin’s cousin – is the chairman of the coal mining company JSC Kolmar Group.