The first time since the conflict began, two American fighters have been taken as prisoners of war in Ukraine.
Russian forces seized Robert Drueke and Andy Huynh last week on the outskirts of Kharkiv.
Both Drueke, 39, and Huynh, 27, are Alabama natives. It’s unclear whether they were acquainted before they both volunteered to go to Ukraine earlier this year to help Ukrainian military defend their country against Russian forces.
Last week, as they defended Kharkiv, one of the men’s comrades recalled losing sight of the pair in a battle.
According to one of their teammates, the two were members of a ten-man unit defending Kharkiv last week when they were ambushed by Russian soldiers.
Drueke and Huynh used a grenade to damage a Russian tank, but they were lost in the ensuing firefight. They had vanished by the time it had cleared.
Drueke served in the US Army in Iraq, but Huynh, a former Marine, has never fought in combat. After witnessing the invasion from afar, he raced to Ukraine in April, claiming before he departed that he was ‘at peace’ with the possibility of dying in the fight.
The State Department said on Tuesday it was ‘aware’ of reports of their capture but a spokesman declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.
The White House is also ‘aware’ of the reports, a spokesman told DailyMail.com.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Army Gen. Mark A. Milley did not comment on the capture on Tuesday.
‘We were out on a mission and the whole thing went absolutely crazy, with bad intel. We were told the town was clear when it turned out the Russians were already assaulting it.
‘They came down the road with two T72 tanks and multiple BMP3s (armored fighting vehicles) and about 100 infantry. The only thing that was there was our ten man squad,’ one of their comrades told The Daily Telegraph in an interview on Tuesday.
‘We suspect that they were knocked unconscious by either the anti-tank mine, or by the tank shooting at them, because later search missions found not sign of them, nothing.
‘Afterwards we sent drones up and had a Ukrainian search team on the ground but we found nothing: if they had been hit by the tank shell there would have been remains of their bodies or equipment at the scene,’ he said.
Russian forces claimed that night on the app Telegram to have captured two American soldiers.
Drueke’s mother in Alabama told the Telegraph she is in contact with the government and hopes they will secure her son’s release.
‘The US embassy have assured me that they are doing everything they can to find him and that they are searching for him alive, not dead.
‘I am doing my best not to fall apart, I am going to stay strong. I am very hopeful that they will keep him to exchange for Russian PoWs,’ she said.
The conflict in Ukraine has now raged for over 100 days, with Russian forces now concentrating their offensive on the Donbas region.
Experts believe the war is at a pivotal moment, with Russia advancing further on Ukraine and likely to take hold of the East.
President Zelensky this week begged the West for more weapons to continue his ferocious defense.
President Biden announced an additional $1billion in aid to the Ukrainian government on Wednesday as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin prepared to chair a committee of 50 Western countries in Brussels to calibrate a response.