Exclusive
'SCARED TO DEATH'
I was ‘fried’ with a cattle prod and starved by Russian torturers – but hardest thing was how they threatened my mum
BENEATH his filthy hood, former British squaddie Shaun Pinner felt his Russian torturers attach electrodes to his trembling fingers.
When the 15-second blast of electricity came, it forced him upright from his chair in a “hyperactive spasm” that left him “twitching and drooling”.
9
9
Caught fighting on the front line for Ukraine, Shaun had also been starved, pistol-whipped, stabbed in the leg and “fried” with a cattle-prod.
Now his sadistic captors planned to use him in a prisoner swap in exchange for pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.
To break the news to the world, the goons insisted Shaun had to phone a British newspaper.
“I had to think fast,” the 49-year-old recalls today. “I recommended ringing The Sun.
READ MORE ON UKRAINE WAR
“I told them that if they wanted to appeal to a maximum circulation and all sorts of people, then you guys were the right choice.
“When I rang The Sun it was a godsend your newsdesk picked up.”
Shaun is speaking at our London Bridge HQ, where he was meeting news desk executives Ben O’Driscoll and Alex West — who took his calls when he was incarcerated.
The ex-soldier is clearly moved by the occasion, with his thoughts drifting back to his inhuman treatment at the hands of Putin’s rabble.
Most read in The Sun
In a transcript of one of his calls, Shaun tells Alex how he and fellow British prisoner of war Aiden Aslin had been charged with being “illegal combatants”.
‘Scared to death’
The stilted conversation — with his jailers looming over him — continued: “We’ve been told the maximum penalty is a jail sentence of up to 20 years or the death penalty.
“We want to come home. We’re scared to death.”
On advice from the Foreign Office, The Sun did not run any of the interviews Shaun had given us while he was clearly under duress.
Executive news editor Ben told the ex-Army man during his London visit: “We passed everything you said to us to the Foreign Office.
“We wanted readers to know what you were going through and felt powerless that we couldn’t publish what you’d told us.”
The Sun was able to run other stories about Shaun’s capture that were in the public arena.
Today he says the articles gave him solace, adding: “When a story appeared I had the reassurance that I was in the British Press, which would likely mean I wasn’t going to be executed.”
Fellow British prisoner Aiden — who also spoke to The Sun while in captivity — tried ringing other newspapers but had less luck.
He remembered: “When my captors called The Guardian, its switchboard couldn’t find a reporter to talk to me, so that was a dud.”
The thugs in Putin’s puppet state, the Donetsk People’s Republic, also forced them to make bizarre calls to UK government departments and political parties.
On one occasion, Shaun was told to contact then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson by calling the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The dad, who has a child with his former wife, says: “Barbara on reception answered. I told her I was being held hostage in the Donetsk People’s Republic and needed to get a message to Boris Johnson.
“There was an awkward silence and then she said, ‘That’s a bit above my pay grade’.”
Shaun — awarded Ukraine’s Order Of Courage by President Volodymyr Zelensky — has penned his extraordinary story in his new book, Live. Fight. Survive.
A Boys’ Own adventure of derring-do, it follows his journey from being a Watford waste management consultant to Putin PoW.
At its heart is his love for Ukrainian wife Larysa and her homeland — a nation he was prepared to die for.
Born in Bushey, Herts, he had dreamt of a life in khaki and joined the Royal Anglian Regiment aged 17.
As part of his training for a deployment to Bosnia, he undertook a six-week “Survival, Evasion, Resistance And Escape” course, which involved role-play of him being placed in a hood and interrogated.
He recalled: “It was terrifyingly realistic. The training was to come in very handy.”
Returning to civvy street in 1999, he launched a successful waste management business, but admits his life then slowly “fell apart”.
His marriage disintegrated and he pined for the “sense of belonging” he once had in the British Army.
In 2016, he became a contract soldier serving alongside the Kurdish YPG militias, who were then fighting Islamic State in northern Syria.
Two years later, he was training the Ukrainian military in surveillance, sniper skills and reconnaissance.
In September 2018, he met Larysa, 44, who worked for an organisation deactivating landmines planted by Putin’s forces.
They married in 2020 and lived together in Larysa’s home city of Mariupol.
Shaun joined Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, First Battalion as a contract soldier.
Soon he was on the Donbas front line, facing separatist forces loyal to Putin in trenches similar to something from the First World War, while temperatures plunged to as low as -28C.
Shaun says: “Mariupol was now my home and it was a no-brainer to defend it.”
‘Threat to slit my throat’
Amid reports Russian forces were massing on the borders of Ukraine, Shaun’s mum Deborah called from Britain and pleaded: “Come home.”
But Shaun told her: “I can’t live with myself if I don’t stay and fight.”
9
9
Today, he says: “I saw it as a battle between good and evil, something worth fighting for.”
Then, on February 24, 2022, Putin unleashed his blitzkrieg on Ukraine.
Amid deafening explosions and blinding smoke, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in Shaun’s trench, knocking him to the floor.
He got to his feet and ducked just in time to avoid a hail of bullets where his head had been.
In danger of being overrun, his unit was pulled back towards Mariupol, eventually taking up positions around the Illich steel plant on the city’s northern edge.
The marines were pulverised by air, tank and artillery fire in hellish scenes of death and devastation.
After a six-hour bombardment, Shaun was able to make what he thought might be his last call to Larysa.
“I said, ‘It’s over. We’ve got no food, no ammunition’,” he recalls.
“’They’re closing in. I don’t think we’re going to get out of this’.”
There was a pause on the line before Larysa screamed: “Live. Fight. Survive! Don’t f***ing die!”
At 3am on April 13, 2022, his unit attempted to break out in lorries welded with makeshift armour.
But the convoy was hit by air strikes and, in the night-time confusion, Shaun became separated from his comrades.
Starving and alone, he struck out for the Ukrainian battle lines 80 miles away — only to be captured by DPR separatists.
He was then plunged into a purgatory of torture and starvation which eventually saw him sentenced to death and labelled a “Nazi mercenary terrorist”.
On one particularly harrowing occasion, his torturers threatened to “slit my throat and send a video of the killing to my mum”.
He says: “That was hard. I had to make a decision that if I was going to die, I wouldn’t do it rolling over on my back looking weak.”
Shaun — who today helps train Nato troops on surviving captivity — says gallows humour kept him and fellow PoWs sane.
He tells the story of how guards treated him and Moroccan fellow prisoner Ibrahim Sadun to their weekly shower.
“We were dragged upstairs in hoods, beaten with batons as we bounced off the walls, and thrown into a shower for a few minutes.
“Then we were hooded, thrown down the stairs, beaten and dragged back into our cell dripping wet.
“As we lay there, Ibrahim leaned over and said, ‘I think I’ll give shower day a miss next week’.
“I belly-laughed — if they break your humour, you’ve got nothing left.”
9
9
Excuse me, you look like Roman Abramovic
AFTER six months of beatings and suffering from malnutrition, Shaun was freed in a deal which former Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich helped to broker.
Here, in an extract from his book, Shaun recalls what happened when he and fellow Brit hostages Aiden Aslin, John Harding, Dylan Healy and Andy Hill were loaded on to a plane out of Russia.
9
9
AS I climbed on to the plane, my head seemed to swivel in a manic risk assessment.
Unless I was imagining things, the dishevelled Western prisoners were being embarked on a Kim Kardashian-style jet, looking more like competition winners on an all-expenses-paid jolly to Disneyland than PoWs.
At the centre of it all was a man in his fifties in a perfectly tailored suit, who seemed to exude an extra layer of power to everyone else.
This was amplified further by the small but muscular security man by his side.
After a second or two I experienced a flicker of recognition.
I nudged Andy, who was sitting in the row ahead. ‘Hey, that bloke don’t half look like the Chelsea owner . . . What’s his name?’
Andy stared at me in disbelief.
‘Roman Abramovich?’ ‘Yeah. Him. He looks like Roman Abram- ovich!’
Andy stared at the Important Man and snorted.
“You’re tripping, mate. What the f*** is Roman Abramovich going to be doing out here? It’s mid-September. The football season’s started.”
Fair point. Then I overheard the Important Man and his PA talking in English, and one sentence sucked the air out of my lungs. “We’re just waiting for confirmation of the people at the other end.”
The people at the other end? This was it. We were being exchanged.
The plane’s jet engines whined. I sank deeper into the seat and squeezed my eyes shut, fearing yet another false dawn.
Then a man I recognised as one of the doctors from the airport terminal stood in front of us. He had an announcement to make.
“Gentlemen, you’re not officially free until we’re away from Russian airspace,” he said calmly. ‘But you’re free. A deal has been struck to broker your release.’
There was yelling and cheering.
I felt overwhelmed with relief.
I folded over in my chair, my head in my hands, and wept.
I thought of Larysa and my son.
I imagined hugging my mum.
I dreamed of England.
Bloody hell: Steak and chips.
Slowly, the plane taxied down the runway and climbed into the sky.
We were on our way.
We eventually learned that we were being taken to Saudi Arabia.
After that, we were to be flown home and reunited with our families.
Every snippet of good news brought a flood of tears.
After all the pain, suffering and violence, I couldn’t believe that something nice was happening to me – every act of kindness felt otherworldly.
I went to the toilet and when I came back I caught the eye of the Important Man.
“I’ve got to get this off my chest,” I said, nervously.
“And I’m sure you must get this all the time, but . . . you really look like Roman Abramovich.”
The Important Man laughed.
“Well, that’s because I am Roman Abramovich,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand.
“I can’t believe this. What are you doing here?” His PA tapped me on the arm. “Mr Abramovich has helped to broker your release.”
Composing myself, I looked across at Andy, who was gawping.
“Bloody hell!” he said. There was more laughter.
When I turned back, John was messing around cracking jokes.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
“Why couldn’t you have bought West Ham rather than Chelsea?” he shouted.
- Live. Fight. Survive: One Soldier’s Extraordinary Story Of The War Against Russia, by Shaun Pinner, is out on Thursday.
9
Topics