The first two American soldiers to be taken as prisoners of war in Ukraine since the crisis began in March.
According to sources quoted by The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, Russian agents kidnapped Robert Drueke and Andy Huynh last week on the outskirts of Kharkiv.
Both Drueke, 39, and Huynh, 27, are Alabama natives. During a battle last week, one of their comrades claimed to have lost sight of the two. Drueke served in the US Army in Iraq, but Huynh, a former Marine, has never fought in combat.
‘We were on an operation, and everything went completely insane due to faulty intel.’ When it proved out that the Russians were already invading the town, we were informed it was clear.
‘They came down the road with two T72 tanks, a slew of BMP3s (armored combat vehicles), and around a hundred troops.’ Our ten-man unit was the only thing there,’ one of their comrades stated.
‘We believe they were knocked out by either the anti-tank mine or the tank that fired at them, because following search operations discovered no trace of them.’
‘We sent drones up and had a Ukrainian search team on the ground after that, but we found nothing: if they were killed by the tank shell, there would have been remains of their bodies or equipment at the area,’ he claimed.
The Pentagon and the State Department have yet to respond to the allegations.
The US has declined to send soldiers to the region, as have other Western countries.
Drueke is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and is 39 years old.
His mother told the Telegraph that he served in Iraq but failed to find work and reintegrate into society after returning home.
‘The US embassy has promised me that they are doing everything possible to locate him and that they are looking for him alive, rather than dead.’
‘I’m doing my hardest not to break down; I’m going to stay strong.’
‘I’m hoping they’ll keep him in return for Russian POWs,’ she expressed her optimism.
Huynh told a local journalist why he wanted to assist before flying to the area.
‘I knew it wasn’t my problem, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that I ought to act.’ It kept eating me up inside two weeks after the conflict started, and it simply felt wrong. I was having trouble sleeping…
He said, “All I could think about was the situation in Ukraine.”
He served in the Marines for four years, two of which were spent on a base in Okinawa, Japan, but he has never seen active combat.
It comes after Putin’s forces kidnapped two British citizens. A proxy court in eastern Ukraine has sentenced Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin to death. In April, they were apprehended.
The duo has now been sentenced to die by firing squad.
Officials from the United Kingdom said they’re trying everything they can to get the pair out of Russian custody before they’re killed.