Or, like, im now a lot bigger compared to when i was released. Im sure everyone would remember the images. I was a lot skinnier than i am now. But i think mentally, you know, im mentally better than i was, especially, like, just coming out of captivity. Erm, but as most people can probably observe, like, i still have, like, a lot of issues mentallyjust dealing with going back out into the big wide world after going through what we did go through. I am wondering how a youth in his late teens turning 20 could become so fixated on fighting in other peoples wars. Because thats what happened. Pretty much, erm, and i think. | think, like, the important thing to realise is. Is that, like, my childhood, like, when i was growing up, i never. Never had any aspirations to go into any sort of conflict or military setting. Like my sole goal in life was to grow up, become a police officer. That was like my goal, like, my career ambition. But it wasnt until 2014 when around that time we saw the gradual unfolding that was going on in iraq and syria. We had, like, erm, isis that was starting to grow bigger and bigger, the atrocities that they started to commit. I remember watching these, like, images that were coming. I think. I think the one that struck out to me the most was back in sinjar when Itv Werejoining an Iraqi Helicopter that was going to the top of the mountain to deliver humanitarian aid to the yazidis that were hiding at the top from isis. And i remember seeing the images that were coming out from the yazidis that were trying to climb on board because they faced, like, death, they were pretty much running from death. And it was at that moment, i thought to myself that in principle, like, i like to hold, like, a pretty moral, like, regard to how people should be treated and when we should help people and when we shouldnt. And it was at that moment that i decided that i could either continue to moan about what im seeing, be frustrated about this, that no one is doing anything to help them, or at least i can stand by my principles, go out there and at least show them that theyre not forgotten about. And what you did was ultimately through the internet and a bunch of connections that you made, you ended up in the group known as the ypg kurdish fighters on northern syrian territory who were taking on so called islamic state. Youd never held a gun in your life at this point . No. So i came from a civilian background. I worked security on, like, a nightclubs or as well as working in a support worker environment, working with autistic adults. So for me to go from that to, like, that environment, quite a big and crazy step. Did you think to yourself, aiden, am i really ready to kill someone, to use this gun . I remember thinking to myself at the time when i got there, i got into syria. I was like, ok, im now in syria. Like, is this what. Is this what i came here for . And i knew 100 with myself that when you go to a war, like, the whole point of doing this is at some point youre going to be expected to. To kill someone if it happens. So i had come to terms with that, like, reality and also talked to myself, like, reasoned with it. So i knew at One Moment In Time there may be occasion, an occasion where i will be forced to pull the trigger on another human life. And my. My Point Of View was, if its in defence of someone that cant do that, then so be it. Youve written a memoir, putins prisoner. You write very frankly. You say, my Panic Attacks became so great that i had to take a break from the war. And you ended up, of course, back in the uk. Youd seen terrible things. Youd had this horrific experience. Youre still only in your early twenties. Yeah. And yet. And yet you then, within a year or two, decide to go to ukraine and join the ukraine army. I tried to go back to a normal life and frankly speaking, like, when you see those kind of things, like, the atrocities, like, during my time in syria, i saw mass graves that isis has created. I saw a lot of things that the normal person shouldnt see. Erm, so when i did go back, i did try to, like, get back to a normal life. But for me, i struggled a lot after that because after everything i saw, like, itjust wasnt right for me tojust go back, like, work a normal day to dayjob. You see, this gets to the heart of what i find so interesting about you. And notjust you, but there are hundreds, thousands of foreigners who do sign up for causes, for wars of which theyre not fighting for their own soil. Theyre fighting for someone else� s soil. Im just wondering also whether there comes a point where there is an addiction to fighting, to the adrenaline, to the excitement. Erm. I wouldnt say theres an addiction. Id say especially at least in my experience with going to ukraine, when i chose to go there, i knew what the situation was. I knew that the so called separatists in the east were backed by the russian military. And i discovered, like, pretty much in late 2017 that you could join the Ukrainian Military officially, like, in a Legal Process as a foreigner. You could sign up for three years. Yeah. So you could sign up for three years. When you complete that, you could then take your citizenship. And for me, that was the ideal. You wanted that. Yeah. You wanted to become a full fledged ukrainian . Yeah. So after that, after syria, and like Everything Else that i detailed in the book about when. When i did return to the uk, for me, the best benefit i could do to get back to a normal life was emigrate to a new country. I could either. I could either try and go through a more difficult process of emigrating to a country and going through the long process of eventually taking citizenship. But again, it goes back to my principles and morals, like, if you want to emigrate to another country then you should give Something Back to that country in return. So by 2022, you are still in the army, youre now very committed to this land and you find yourself serving when Vladimir Putin launches that full scale invasion. And at that point, when it becomes ukraine is in an existential war, you find yourself in the marines on the front line near mariupol, which is the port which saw some of the most brutalfighting. Were you very scared . Id say youd be a fool to say you werent scared, erm, because you understand whats coming. Like this. This isnt going to be syria, where its, like, pretty low scale, conventional, like, militia type fighting. This is going to be full spectrum, like, everythings going to be thrown at you. So we were. We were pretty well aware of what was coming. And youre a brit caught up in this. Yeah. And im just wondering, honestly, whether moments before you finally got captured, when you thought to yourself, aiden, im british, i dont need this. Yeah, so. Ive got to run away. So i knew being british, im going to be picked up, like, really easily. So we were in the illich steelworks, which is north of the city. The azovstal one, which was, like, more known, was, like, to the south. But by that point wed been cut off and throughout this whole siege, like, wed been preparing the vehicles to try and make a breakfor ukrainian lines. However, the first night that we tried that, for some reason it was cancelled. And then the second day, thats when the russians just hit us with everything they had, they destroyed all our, like, trucks that were loaded with our ammunition, our supplies. And, you know, by this point, like, what else is there left . Like, what do we do . Because now we have no supplies. You were. You were part of a very significant force that surrendered. Yeah. And within 48 hours of being taken into captivity, you were subjected to really very serious physical abuse. Definitely. And i think i wouldnt say so much the worst part in the way i look at it, like, i knew what was going to happen, like to a degree, just before i surrendered, because i had that opportunity to use the starlink system, which is the Internet Satellite that we had. I knew the best thing that i could do is take a. A Pre Surrender video just to tell people whats going to happen to us. Did you imagine, as you did that Pre Surrender video that, my mother is going to watch this . I actually sent it to her. So i said to her, like after id spoken to her, like, just make this as public as possible. Because my fear at that point was that i wouldnt be alive in the next 2a hours. I was expecting to just be executed because i had. I had already seen the videos and rumours of what wagner were doing to ukrainian soldiers. The abuse was a beating. You also ended up being stabbed . Yeah. Where were you stabbed . Just on the left shoulder. You survived all of that. But you do say, and youre very honest about your mindset through all of this, you say again that you tried to put up defensive walls in your mind, and the scale of the violence that was meted out on you, it sort of caved in those walls. Yeah. So when i think back to the moment when i was being beaten, i think one of the things that strikes out to me, at least from what i remember, i dont remember, like, crying but i remember screaming. Er, and when it did stop and over time, from that moment when. When he showed me that he stabbed me, it was at that moment where, like, everything just caved in, like, because i expected to be beaten. I just didnt expect to be stabbed. And then over time, like throughout the rest of captivity, i couldnt. I had no Thought Process and like being able to cry even when i wanted to cry. This is difficult stuff to talk about. Its also very important stuff to talk about because the context of this is that there have been a whole series of allegations of abuses by Russian Forces. Your story is just one of many different forms of abuse, but you say that yours has a unique quality because of the nature of the evidence you can present. By that you mean a video that was taken after this abuse you say you experienced. Yeah. Which could be compared with that Pre Surrender video youd made. Yes. So again, like, going back to the Pre Surrender video, that was one of the greatest decisions that i think ive made in my life, because if i hadnt have made that video, no one would have known of what i looked like before i went into captivity. Unfortunately for the Decision Makers in the. In the interrogation chambers inside russia, they decided to do what they did and then put me on film, like, 42 hours later, whichjust showed to the whole world of, like, how russian captivity actually is. So for me, like, as much as i suffered throughout that and because of. I suffered more because i made that video. In the long run, now that im free, im able to present that as evidence to. To the courts when its applicable. You, in the end, were held for, what, between four and five months . Er, again, its difficult. But you say you did go through the toughest of times when you thought about ending your own life. Yeah. And i think. It seems to me the worst thing that you experienced wasnt even about your own body, about physical abuse on you. It was being right next. In the cell next to an individual who had been brought in. And was beaten to death. Yeah. And i try to tell people, like, for me, im not a very. Like, especially previously before the invasion, after everything ive already witnessed. Like in total in syria, i probably lost around, like, 30 friends that i personally knew and a lot more closer friends. So after that i became a lot more numb to that sort of, like, emotion. And even after, like, mariupol and Everything Else and even captivity, i can happily talk about, like, how i was beaten and everything. But for me, the most traumatic is. Is being in the. When i. When i put myself back into that room where i could hear someone be beaten to death. For me, thats like my most traumatic moment. And thats when i do get emotional because i think the hardest thing for me to accept is. Is like, yes, like ,i witnessed it. Like, i witnessed it. But at the same time, i still dont know what his name was. And for me, thats like very, like, traumatic because, like, ijust dont know his name. See, your honesty through all of this is. Is very striking because you basically talk about feelings of guilt and shame and you say that you plumbed the depths of your own cowardice. And you say that because of some of the things you said. Yeah. Some of the things that frankly, you were forced, required to say by your captors on videotape. And bizarrely, one of your inquisitors who calls himself a journalist was actually a british citizen. Yeah. Who clearly has chosen to work inside russia. It clearly upsets you, some of the things you said and indeed your guilty plea to notjust being a mercenary, which actually you werent. Yeah. Because youd chosen to make your life in ukraine and you signed up to the regular army. But you also pleaded guilty to trying to bring down the donetsk peoples republic, which carried a Death Sentence. Yeah. So, i mean, this is the other thing, like, with especially with the. The so called journalist, as you saw in the video, like, he asked me, like, whatam i . And i was compelled to say im a mercenary. And then he told me that the Death Sentence for the mercenary. He told me the Mercenary Charge is the Death Sentence. However, that wasnt the case. We would later come to learn in court that the actual punishment for the Death Sentence was the trying to seize power, which we werent aware of. Yeah, to overthrow the so called peoples republic. But im still struggling to understand why you. You know, were so angry with yourself, why you felt that youd exhibited this cowardice. Because nobody listening to this would judge you in any way as behaving in a cowardly fashion. I think. I think a lot of it is with the amount of times i was taken out that that built to this. So theres a lot of my friends that ive seen where ive seen seen them put into front. In front of a video camera and theyre basically forced to say stuff but for them. Like some of them will only do it, like, a few times, maybe once. But with me, i was pretty much taken out, like, five times a week in the very few first months, and it just became a pattern. And then over time, i was becoming conditioned to the way i was being taken out. So psychologically id be going into these sessions, but id be looking normal but deep down, like, i was pretty much losing my mind because of what they were doing to me. Having been given a Death Sentence, having this notion of execution hanging over you, you then were released because a deal was done, a much wider geopolitical deal was being done in which the release of you as a british citizen was tied to the ukrainians releasing viktor medvedchuk, who was a friend of putin. Yeah. Roman abramovich and the saudi government were involved. You ended up being flown out of russia to freedom. Lets talk about a couple of issues since then. One is youve talked about justice. Youve talked about your dream of meeting that prison guard who stabbed you at the International Criminal court in the hague. Do you really believe that justice can be done . Ideally, thats my dream. But realistically, like many things that weve seen in previous conflicts, like, it is anything buta dream. We only need to look at the conflict and the balkans to see who was prosecuted and who was let go. So i think at the end of this conflict, when it does end, theres going to be something similar to that and people will be let go in. In exchange for the higher ups that made the decisions. There are there are thousands of allegations, as i said there are thousands of allegations, as i said earlier, facing russian leadership and Russian Forces on the ground as a result of what they have done in ukraine. There are also allegations of crimes committed by Ukrainian Forces. Theres no sense, i think, of equivalence. Yeah. But nonetheless, it is important that if justice is to be done, its to be done on both sides. So be honest with me. Did you see crimes being committed when you were serving with the Ukrainian Forces . Not. Not when i was in service, ive never seen anything. Ive seen like videos, like, through social media. However, i think in. In reality, like, its. Its. It doesnt make sense to say theres no war crimes, like, from one side or the other because war is war, like, as they say, war is hell. Er, so there will always be war crimes on whichever side, regardless of the circumstances. And i think the most important aspect to understand is. Is theres most definitely individual cases. However, from what ive seen on the russian side, its systematic. Like three weeks ago, i was in geneva to speak at the United NationsHuman Rights Council on a side event and i spoke about my experience. And while i was there, i was listening to the mounting allegations against russia and the other countries that were speaking up in this regard. And they themselves had said, like, in the reports that the un had conducted, that they had found war crimes on the ukrainian side. However, none of it is systematic compared to the opposite side. I want to ask you, as we reflect on what you may have learned about the notion of people like you joining other peoples wars as foreign fighters. Would you say that, in the end, a lot of these foreign fighters, even the ones with the best of intentions, are a liability . I would say its a bit of a 50 50, especially during the beginning of the full scale invasion. Theres a lot of people that came here with the wrong intentions that basically were just a liability to themselves. But i have seen and i have met a lot of people that have come out here with the best intentions, and they are doing things that. That are helping the cause. Were you a good soldier or were you at times a liability . I would say i was a good soldier. I was there for, like, four years. I got on. The only thing that i failed as a soldier was getting captured. Another thought you have made it plain you see your future in ukraine. Do you worry, as a former soldier and somebody who knows the soldiers, that despite the spirit and defiance of ukraine, this is becoming a war too costly that they cannot win . I think ukraine can win as long as the west continues its support. Before the invasion, like, myself and others that were in my unit, wed always said that the ukrainians were going to give a bloody nose to the russians if they invaded, and theyve done a lot more than that. But at the same time, with how big this conflict is, i think if support for the west. From the west stops, then we will be looking at a very possible reality that eventually Ukrainian Forces will be forced to lose by attrition. Under the rules of your release, you are not supposed to go back to the front line and fight. I just wonder whether there is a part of you that would like to, might even contemplate going back to fight . There. Theres always a part of me that would like to go back. A lot of my ukrainian friends that are released, a lot of them will go back to serving in the military. Some of them will end up going back to the front line out of their choice. But if we go back, obviously, the Geneva Convention states that if youre taken into captivity a second time, you wont have those protections. So if. If russia wanted to, they could decide to just shoot you. Will you do it or not . No, no. My. My voice is a lot more powerful on. On a platform, being able to peak about ukraine and spread awareness about the conditions that our guys are still serving in the prisons in donetsk and elsewhere. You have said, i would do it all again. No regrets. Im struggling to believe you really mean that. I would definitely do it again. Its hard for people to understand. Had i not done it, i wouldnt have the friends, i would never have met my fiancee. Like, my vast network of friends and family that i now have. And you wouldnt have the trauma, you wouldnt have the scars, you wouldnt have the stab wounds. It. Its always, like, when. Even when you go into any sort of military, like, thats pretty much an accepted risk that you take, quite a lot different to civilian work. But. You can say that. For me, i accepted that as. As a risk. Aiden aslin, thank you very much for talking to me on hardtalk. Thank you. Hello there. After our recent severe, stormy spell of weather, monday for many was a refreshing change. We actually had some sunshine around. In fact, it wasnt a bad day in scotland. Take a look at this Weather Watcher picture from highland. Plenty of blue sky and sunshine here. We did have some rain around on monday, the heaviest of which was down in the south west, in particular the isles of scilly. Just shy of two inches of rain fell during the early hours of monday morning, but threatening looking skies for much of the day. Now, we are set to see further outbreaks of rain as we go through the week ahead. Perhaps not quite as severe as last week, but nevertheless showers or longer spells of rain and the winds will be quite a feature. So if we take a look at rainfall accumulation over the next few days, the mid tone blues is anywhere between 30 50 mm of rain. So the heaviest of which will be across the south and east coasts, isuspect, over the next couple of days. Perhaps the far north West Of Scotland staying predominantly dry, and the reason for that is the direction of the wind at times. So as we move into tuesday, weve got this little fellow here, which is going to bring some persistent outbreaks of showery rain in areas unfortunately where we dont need it. So across parts of lincolnshire, the East Midlands and parts of northern england, in particular south yorkshire. So therell be showers merging together for longer spells of rain at times. Not as bad as it has been, but we will need to keep a close eye on that. To the south of it, sunny spells and a few scattered showers. For much of scotland and parts of northern ireland, it will be predominantly dry. The bulk of scotland keeping with some sunshine, 11 12 degrees the high here, perhaps highest values of 15 celsius. Move out of tuesday and into wednesday, and this little ridge of High Pressure building fora time, quietening things down for the start of wednesday before yet another low pressure starts to wind its way in from the atlantic. The isobars squeezing together, the winds a feature. So an easterly wind feeding in some showers. That means Western Scotland may well stay fairly dry. England and wales starting off dry and bright, clouding over from the south west eventually on wednesday. Temperatures between 10 15 degrees. Now, that area of low pressure will continue to push some wet and windy weather at times. Very heavy rain moving its way across the near continent as well. Closest to that area of low pressure, we continue to see that feed of showers through that south westerly wind. A mild source, so the temperatures wont be too disappointing, but the showers could be quite heavy at times. And theyll rattle through at quite a pace because the winds will remain quite a feature. 11 15 degrees once again our daytime maximums. Now as we move out of thursday into friday, that low pressure is slowly drifting its way steadily eastwards. We keep those tightly packed isobars. We keep the winds a feature, and its almost a repeat performance. Therell be showers, some of them quite torrential at times, and they will continue to drift their way up through the south west. In the middle, perhaps fewer showers. A slightly quieter story for south yorkshire, for the East Midlands, for lincolnshire, where weve got that threat of further flooding. Now, as we move into the weekend, that low pressure is going to drift its way steadily east. That can only mean one thing, little respite in the weather story. We continue to see this unsettled autumnal flavour to close out the month of october, so, yes, halloween continues to be quite a howler. Not only with the story of the weather, but also no doubt if youre out trick or treating. Take care. Live from london. This is bbc news. Two more hostages have been released by hamas more than two weeks after being abducted in the attacks of october 7th. Israels bombardment of gaza shows no sign of letting up. We have special reporting from the ground. And a new Scientific Study says its too late to prevent melting of the west Antarctic Ice sheet. Hello, im sally bundock. Two israeli women who were taken from their homes more than two weeks ago have been released from captivity. Yocheved lifshitz and nurit cooper were among more than 200 people abducted by hamas fighters in the attacks of october 7th, and brought to gaza. Hamas, which is designated a Terrorist Group by many western governments including the uk, said the release was for humanitarian reasons. The women, whose husbands are still being held, were handed over at the rafah Border Crossing between gaza and egypt at around 10 oclock local time last night. President biden has called for the release of all hostages in gaza before there can be a ceasefire. Lucy williamson reports. Released by hamas after more than two weeks in captivity, Yocheved Lifshitz and nurit cooper were taken out of gaza into egypt. Freed on health grounds, hamas said no longer