The British-born Ukrainian marine who fought against the Russians and then was captured by them has recalled the horror of being imprisoned.
During more than five months as a prisoner of war, Aiden Aslin was beaten "black and blue", stabbed, threatened with execution and witnessed the killing of another prisoner.
He was captured with fellow Brit Shaun Pinner in the besieged city of Mariupol after their unit was forced to surrender when they ran out of food and ammunition.
The men were told to expect execution by firing squad after pleading guilty in a sham judgement to mercenary and terrorist activities. But they were eventually released alongside five other international prisoners after the intervention of Saudi Arabia.
The 28-year-old recalled the first day they were captured, when, for 11 hours, they were forced "on pain of being beaten, to stand with our head against a wall, our hands held behind our backs, or else."
He writes in the MailOnline: "It's painful enough for five minutes. For eleven hours it's torture. We are given no food, no water. And the only toilets we can use are two buckets. Very soon, the place stinks to high heaven."
Prior to Ukraine, the Nottinghamshire man was fighting against Islamic State in Syria, but nothing could have prepared him for the brutality of being captured by Russians: "The effect of this was far more powerful than I could ever have imagined."
Aiden recalled the moment his captors realised where he was from which resulted in instantly being punched "square on the nose."
He continued: "After realising I was British and socking me in the face, he really started to lay into me, jabs to my face and body before a senior officer shouted at him to cut it out. The beating stopped but [he] remained on a mission to give me a horrible time."
Photos released during Aiden's captivity showed him with a deep red scar running down his forehead where they smashed his face with a truncheon. His right eye was half-closed from the impact and there was a vivid bruise on his cheek.
"My hands are cuffed, my left arm masking my right hand that has swollen so massively after I used it to protect the back of my head while they were clobbering me", he continues, "They have done something to me you can't see in the video, but it's broken my resistance."
Aiden described how his cell measured two metres by two-and-a-half metres and his sleeping mat was infested with lice. One night, the man in the next cell was murdered. Aiden said this "was perhaps" the lowest point of his time in captivity.
"To hear someone being murdered in the next cell, and to be utterly helpless to prevent it, well, I would not wish that on my worst enemy", he writes.
Aiden previously said he and his Ukrainian wife planned to return home to collect their belongings and then move to a new house in west Ukraine. For now, he remains in Nottinghamshire.
