Aiden Aslin on life in Russian prison: 'He said he’d stabbed me. I just went into survival mode'
The TelegraphThe first punch in the face, delivered after he admitted to being British, was “not a bad beating”. Instead, he is proud of his unit's role in holding back Vladimir Putin's war machine, and wants the world to know that many are still behind bars. “The Ukrainian marines alongside the national guard and the border guards and the police in Mariupol ended up putting up a hell of a fight,” he says when asked if he would do it all again. “Our fight helped the rest of Ukraine, because Russia was preoccupied with Mariupol so there were other places they had to lose, like pulling out from north of Kyiv because they couldn't sustain it. I’d like to see the Ukrainian government get those guys home.” It is a strange conversation to be having in a suburban living room in Nottinghamshire.