Americans who volunteered to fight with Ukrainian forces have been missing for days and may be captured by Russia, lawmakers and family members said Wednesday.
• Also read: [EN DIRECT] 112th day of the war in Ukraine: here are the latest developments
According to these reports, Alexander Drueke and Andy Tai Huynh, both from Alabama state, were involved in the fighting north of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
“Earlier this week, the mother of Alexander Drueke, an army veteran” who “volunteered to help the Ukrainian army fight Russia, contacted my services after she lost contact with his son” for “several days.” had, said Terri Sewell, Representative of the Alabama House of Representatives, in a testimony.
His colleague Robert Aderholt added that the family of Andy Tai Huynh, a former marine, has not been in contact with him since June 8 “when he was in the Kharkiv region”.
Alexander Drueke’s mother told US broadcaster CNN that they were “suspected prisoners of war, but (that) it (was) not confirmed”. The US Embassy in Kyiv “could not confirm that he is with the Russians, they can only confirm that he is missing,” Bunny Drueke added.
“We don’t want to make any assumptions at this point about what might have happened,” Andy Tai Huynh’s companion told the American broadcaster. “We’re obviously considering several scenarios, one of which is that they could have been caught,” Joy Black continued.
The two state senators also told the AFP news agency that they were in contact with their families and the US State Department.
“We are aware of unconfirmed information about two American nationals who were detained in Ukraine,” a spokesman for US diplomacy said. “We are closely monitoring the situation and are in contact with the Ukrainian authorities,” he added.
For his part, a White House spokesman, John Kirby, urged Americans not to go to Ukraine to fight. “It’s a war zone, there’s fighting. If you want to support Ukraine, you can do it in many other ways,” he told reporters.