Rabat – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it is not ruling out the death penalty for two US citizens captured in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called two US citizens that were captured in Ukraine “soldiers of fortune” on Monday, adding that they should be “held responsible for their crimes.”
“We can’t rule anything out, because these are court decisions. We don’t comment on them and have no right to interfere,” Peskov told reporters.
US military veterans Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh were last heard from on June 8 in the Kharkiv region alongside the Russia border. They had traveled there to assist Ukrainian forces in the war.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday that he did not know the whereabouts of the two men, and the US State Department said it is monitoring the situation after being made aware of photos that allegedly show their capture.
Interfax, a Russian news agency, reported that the two are being held in the Donetsk region, where death sentences were recently handed out to Moroccan Brahim Saadoun and two British citizens charged with“war crimes and terrorism.”
Although the Russian-backed tribunal in Donetsk claimed Saadoun and the two British citizens are foreign mercenaries who committed war crimes, their defenders have said they are protected by the Geneva conventions as prisoners of war.
The trial of the three sparked heated calls to action across the world, with human rights organizations and activists demanding Russia’s government repeal the sentence.
Read also: Morocco’s CNDH Racing Against Clock to Save Brahim Saadoun
The war in Ukraine has been raging on for well over 100 days, and international organizations such as the UN have been calling for peace and warning that the war will have “no winner.”
