Briton who travelled to join Ukraine military leaves, calling fight a ‘suicide mission’

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A British man who travelled to Ukraine to fight Russian troops in the war says he left the country amid fears he could get caught up in a "suicide mission".

Ben Spann, 36, from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, took up arms in Ukraine despite having no military experience or links with the country.

He said he didn't tell his wife or 16-year-old son he was leaving and spent five days in a safe house in western Ukraine with four ex-British soldiers when he arrived.

While in Ukraine, Mr Spann, who runs an anti-knife crime charity, said he had a gun pointed at his head by a "Ukrainian SWAT team" that searched the safe house where he was staying.

He said he also saw the bodies of two dead Russian soldiers propped up at a checkpoint in a warning to Vladimir Putin’s troops.

Speaking of his decision to return home, Mr Spann said he had been getting "some real grief" from his wife and son after they learned he had gone to fight in the conflict and that he feared getting killed by going into more dangerous areas.

"As these guys made the decision to venture further into the country, I made the decision to go back to the border," he told Sky News.

He said he made his way back to the Polish border, where he entered Ukraine, before travelling back to the UK.

Mr Spann's comments come as the war entered its twentieth day, with Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and several other cities coming under heavy bombardment, although US defence officials say Russian troops have made little progress since the weekend.

The Red Cross said it is hoping to organise the evacuation of two convoys of some 30 buses with civilians out of the besieged northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy and their passage to a safe area, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Ewan Watson, spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told a UN briefing in Geneva that the operation would be carried out with the Ukrainian Red Cross but was not underway yet.

He noted there had been delays with similar evacuations from Mariupol, where he said people are "essentially being suffocated in this city now with no aid".

Some 2.95 million Ukrainians have fled their homeland since Russian forces invaded 20 days ago, including 1.8 million in Poland, UN refugee agency spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh said.

Some 300,000 have gone on to western Europe, he added.

They include 1.4 million children, meaning 73,000 children have become refugees on average each day over the last 20 days or 55 children every minute or almost one per second, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told the same briefing.

On Monday, the UK launched its Homes for Ukraine scheme to help those fleeing the conflict. As of Tuesday morning, some 89,000 people have signed up to register their interest.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.