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'I WANT TO GO BACK'
Brit seriously wounded in Ukraine said he would not hesitate to go back after experiencing Putin’s brutality to kids
A BRIT seriously wounded in Ukraine said he watched in horror as Russian troops blew up children — but that he would not hesitate to go back.
Scaffolder Andrew Hill, 36, left his partner and job to fight in Ukraine where he was shot, captured and tortured by Russian troops.
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And his evil captors even used his phone to send ransom messages to his family — including his 13-year-old daughter.
Andrew is now back home after being freed as part of the deal that also saw fellow British prisoners of war Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner released last month.
He told The Sun that he bought a one-way ticket to Poland and within days was on the front line in Irpin, where he saw atrocities committed against civilians.
Andrew said: “We were at an observation point and there were some kids playing in front of us, maybe about 100 metres away, and they were around 13 years old.
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“We had a clear sight of them and we got on the radio to let the command know so they could get a team together to clear them off.
“Just as that was about to happen the Russians targeted that play park with artillery and directly hit the children. The Russians don’t care. To me it almost seems like a genocide. They want to eradicate Ukrainian culture.”
Andrew, a former soldier in the British Army, was later deployed in Bucha — where the Russians massacred hundreds of civilians.
He said: “The Russians left a mess behind. There were bodies littering the streets everywhere. They found a mass grave. The Russians were just killing everything and everyone.
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“There was a lot of destruction. When we drove into Bucha, you could see the corpses which had been left on the road.”
On a mission in Oleksandrivka, near Kherson, Andrew was shot in the arm, shattering the bone.
He was captured and taken to various different prisons and camps in Donetsk where he was forced to appear in social media videos and was regularly beaten by Vladimir Putin’s Russian thugs.
At one point, Andrew’s partner Candice, 35, and the rest of his family back home in Plymouth, Devon, were told he had died.
The soldier who had shot and captured Andrew also used his phone to send messages to them.
Candice said: “My phone just lit up and said I had a message from Andrew’s phone. They said they wanted 250,000 Euros by a certain date or he’d be dead. The soldier had messaged everyone Andrew had on WhatsApp.
“Every day there was something new and we told the Foreign Office about them straight away. We were only able to cope because we knew he was still alive.”
Andrew was eventually freed in the prisoner exchange organised by Saudi Arabia and former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.
He has a metal frame on his arm to help the bones mend and has been told it could take two years to heal properly.
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Andrew said. “I haven’t settled in at home and it’s still active in my mind. I’m glad I went out there, it was the right thing to do and I don’t regret it at all.
“I still want to go back and fight. I feel strongly for Ukraine and I want to help in any way I can. But my team has said that I can sit the next one out.”
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