(Washington) Americans who volunteered to fight with Ukrainian forces have been missing for several days and may have been captured by Russia, lawmakers and family members said Wednesday.
Posted at 6:24 p.m.
Alexander Drueke and Andy Tai Huynh, both from the state of Alabama, were involved in the fighting north of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to these accounts.
“Earlier this week, the mother of Alexander Drueke, an army veteran” who “volunteered to help the Ukrainian army fight Russia, contacted my services after losing contact with his son” for “several days,” Alabama House Representative Terri Sewell said in a statement.
His colleague Robert Aderholt added that the family of Andy Tai Huynh, a former Marine, had not had any contact with him since June 8, “when he was in the Kharkiv region”.
Alexander Drueke’s mother told the American channel CNN that they were “presumed prisoners of war, but (that) it (had) not been confirmed”. The US Embassy in Kyiv “could not verify that he is with the Russians, all they can verify is that he is missing,” Bunny Drueke added.
“We don’t want to make assumptions about what may have happened at this stage,” Andy Tai Huynh’s companion told the American channel. “We are obviously considering several scenarios, one of them being that they could have been captured,” continued Joy Black.
The two state senators also told AFP that they were in contact with their relatives and the US State Department.
“We are aware of unconfirmed information about two American nationals captured in Ukraine,” said a spokesman for American diplomacy. “We are monitoring the situation closely and are in contact with the Ukrainian authorities,” he added.
A spokesman for the White House, John Kirby, for his part called on the Americans not to go to Ukraine to fight there. “It’s a war zone, there is fighting. If you want to support Ukraine, you can do it in many other ways,” he told reporters.