Drueke and Huynhm, who had disappeared a week ago, were captured during fighting in Kharkov.
The media war that is also taking place in Ukraine is clearly lost by Vladimir Putin. While Kiev president Volodymyr Zelensky has emerged as an international hero, his Moscow counterpart resembles the devil in the popular consciousness of most of the world. The Kremlin’s head is highly regarded only by his compatriots, often victims of the apparatus’s ironclad propaganda.
For this reason, Moscow does not pass up an opportunity to try to take advantage of certain twists and turns the war is leading. For example, it happened this Saturday, when the capture by their occupying forces in Ukraine of two American soldiers who fought on the Ukrainian side became an additional weapon to convince the Russians that things are not as bad as they seem.
A state television channel released videos of Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, both US military veterans from the southern state of Alabama, admitting their mistake of signing up on the wrong side. “My name is Alexander Drueke, I am against war,” said the first in English. Then Huynh repeated the message in Russian: “Ya protiv voyny.”
Another recording shows how Drueke addresses his mother, Bunny, and promises to come home. “Mom, I just wanted to let you know that I’m still alive and I hope to be back as soon as possible.” “I love you,” he added.
The two Americans, branded as mercenaries by the Kremlin, were reported missing last week while fighting near the Russian border.
Families and members of Congress immediately mobilized. Also the president, Joe Biden, but for several days there had been no news from them. The State Department soon hypothesized that the soldiers, including a third soldier who was a captain of the Marines, had been captured.
On Friday evening, Russian RT television journalist Roman Cossarev posted a video on Telegram’s messaging platform in which Drueke spoke to the camera while sitting in an office wearing military clothing. “Send my love to Diesel, I love you,” he said to his mother with a quick wink. According to reports from Alabama, Diesel is his dog.
Telegram RT also broadcast an interview with Huynh, in which he stated that the two “meet in the fight against Russian forces” near the strategic Ukrainian area of Kharkov. “They invaded our positions. We had to go back and one of my colleagues and I waited in a ditch for about three hours to make sure the area had been cleared,” Huynh said. “In the end we walked through the forest for about five hours. We got to a road where we gave up.”
Both Americans ended their interventions by assuring the precarious Russian that they were “against the war.” Then Telegram RT offered its followers the opportunity to meet “the American mercenaries who came to fight us”. “They were stationed near Kharkov. After meeting our men, they hate war and want peace and want to go home. However, this is unlikely.
Source: La Verdad
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