Facebook has removed “Russian misinformation” video of a British-Ukrainian soldier being questioned in handcuffs after the social media platform was approached by a British minister, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
YouTube has taken down a video of Aiden Aslin—a 28-year-old British-born Ukrainian armed forces soldier captured by the Russians in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol—on Friday, but Aslin’s family said on Monday that Facebook had ignored the requests to take down the videos of Aslin and his fellow British captive, 48-year-old Shaun Pinner.
Johnson told TalkTV on Tuesday that Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries made a phone call to former UK deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg, who is now the vice president of global affairs at Facebook’s parent company Meta.
“And as I understand the matter, Nick has agreed to take that down,” the prime minister told the presenter Tom Newton Dunn, who had interviewed Aslin’s mother and brother the day before.
“Russian misinformation cannot be allowed to propagate online,” he wrote.
Meta is understood to have been investigating the video prior to Dorries’s intervention.
The 45-minute video footage, released by Graham Phillips—a pro-Kremlin British journalist—shows Aslin with injuries to his face and being asked if he is speaking of his own free will and with “absolutely” no coercion.
Aslin replies, “Yes, I agreed to this,” before staring blankly into the camera.
Phillips claimed during the interview that Aslin was a “mercenary” rather than a prisoner of war, and told the captive that he could face the death penalty under the laws of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”—a pro-Russian separatist breakaway “state” in Ukraine only recognised by Russia.
Aslin’s family said on Monday that they were “horrified” by the footage, calling for Johnson to “act now” to help free Aslin and Pinner.
In footage broadcast on Russia’s Rossiya 24 last week, Pinner, a second Briton who has been captured, addressed Johnson and appeared to ask for himself and Aslin to be swapped for pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who was arrested by the Ukrainian authorities on April 12.
British Foreign Office minister James Cleverly on Tuesday confirmed that Aslin and Pinner were in the Ukrainian armed forces, and therefore "should be treated as Ukrainian military and as prisoners of war, with all the protections that the international humanitarian law affords to those individuals.”
Both Aslin and Pinner moved to Ukraine in 2018 and joined the Ukrainian military long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to their families.
Asked about the potential prisoners’ swap, Johnson told TalkTV on Tuesday that the government would “do what they can.”
“Clearly it is for the Ukrainians,” he said. “They have the other individual who is part of the equation. We can’t really pre-empt what they may decide.”
He stressed that Aslin is a prisoner of war rather than a hostage.
“It is very important to understand that Aiden and other UK nationals who have been fighting for the Ukraine armed forces who get captured are not hostages and they are not to be swapped as though they are terrorists—they are prisoners of war,” Johnson said.
“They are, therefore, entitled to rights under the Geneva Convention,“ he added. ”They should not be paraded in front of the cameras. They should not be made to give hostage videos—that is a breach of their rights as prisoners of war.”
A spokesperson for Meta said: “We’ve removed the video in question for violating our Privacy Policy.”
