A British man who travelled to Ukraine to join the military fight against Russia’s invasion says he left the warzone amid fears he was facing a “suicide mission”.
Ben Spann told Sky News he did not tell his wife or 16-year-old son that he was going to Ukraine to take up arms, despite the fact he has never served in the military and has no ties to theĀ war-torn country.
The 36-year-old, from Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, said he spent five days in a safe house in western Ukraine with four ex-British soldiers – and at one point had a gun pointed at his head after the property was searched by a “Ukrainian SWAT team”.
He also claimed he saw the bodies of two dead Russian soldiers propped up at a checkpoint “as a warning” to Vladimir Putin’s army.
The Foreign Office has told Britons who travel to Ukraine to fight in the conflict that they could be prosecuted, after the British Army confirmedĀ a number of serving soldiers had gone AWOLĀ and may have travelled there.
Entering Ukraine warzone without family’s knowledge
Mr Spann, who runs an anti-knife crime charity having previously been involved in growing cannabis, told Sky News he wanted to help defend Ukraine because he believed “it was the right thing to do” but admits it was “an absolute nightmare”.
He said he told his family he was flying to Poland to help with the aid effort for Ukrainian refugees, but in fact he intended to “go there and fight”.
After boarding his flight from Stansted to Szczecin in Poland on 2 March, he said he met four ex-British soldiers who planned to “join the resistance” and he decided to enter Ukraine with them.
After landing in Poland, the group travelled by coach before walking across the border into Ukraine in -6C temperatures in the early hours of the morning, Mr Spann said.
They stayed at a “tiny” safe house which had no beds or running water in western Ukraine with several other volunteers, he added.
Mr Spann told Sky News: “It was like walking into a crack den in England, to be honest with you.
“That was a bit of a shock thinking: ‘F****** hell, this is the reality’.”
Mr Spann said the group expected transport to arrive at the safe house on their third day in Ukraine, so they could collect weapons, but it failed to turn up.
‘We sat there with AK-47s pointed at our heads’
That evening, he said there was a knock on the door of the property and “10 members of a Ukrainian SWAT team” stormed in.
Mr Spann said: “One of our snipers who opened the door got pinned back into the wall opposite him by two ballistic shields.
“We sat there with AK-47s pointed at our heads for 20-30 minutes, with our hands on our heads, whilst they searched everywhere, and we were being sort of interrogated.
“One lad refused point-blank to turn around. He said: ‘If you’re going to shoot me, I want you to look me in the eye when you shoot me.’ It was a surreal moment.
“Once we managed to defuse the situation, and they understood the reasons we were there, the whole atmosphere changed.”
Bodies of Russian soldiers ‘propped up as warning’
Because the group had not signed up to Ukraine’s “foreign legion” of fighters before entering Ukraine, Mr Spann said four armed officials later turned up at the property and took photos of their passports.
He said the next day they travelled to a weapons base and saw the bodies of two dead Russian soldiers at a checkpoint “propped up, sat upright with their hats over their faces”.
“This was a warning to the Russians,” he added.
“It was an eye-opener. It made you realise that things are getting real.”
‘My son was doubting whether I even cared about him’
Mr Spann said the group returned to the safe house having failed to receive any weapons, and he was feeling increasingly “vulnerable” as air raid sirens went off in their location.
On his fifth day in Ukraine, Mr Spann said he was getting “real grief” from his wife and son – who were now aware he had entered the warzone – and the four ex-British soldiers had decided to travel to another part of the country.
“I became quite close to these guys,” he said.
“We were prepared to go and fight and basically die together, if that was what happened. You quickly form a bond with people in those situations.
“At that point, I was getting some real grief off my wife and my son.
“My son was doubting whether I even cared about him, why I was doing this – same with my wife.”
Read more:Ā British troops must not go to fight in Ukraine and ‘take some selfies’ – armed forces minister
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Drone shows destruction in Mariupol
Mr Spann said he thought the prospect of travelling to a more dangerous part of Ukraine without weapons “was a bit of a suicide mission”.
“As these guys made the decision to venture further into the country, I made the decision to go back to the border,” he added.
‘My wife was pretty p***** off’
Mr Spann said he travelled back to the Polish border, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have fled to.
“People were pushing and shoving. Kids were screaming and crying. It was snowing. It was cold. My feet were like ice,” he said.
“I dread to think what some of these kids and babies were feeling. They must have been freezing.
“It reminded me of a cattle market, to be honestā¦ the tension was high.
“People had been there for hours and just wanted to get across.”
Mr Spann said he slept on the floor of a refugee centre before travelling to the Polish city of Lublin and then flew back to the UK.
After he had left Ukraine, he said his wife’s emotions turned from “worry to anger”.
“My wife was pretty p***** off saying she was going to kick me out and this, that and the other,” Mr Spann said.
“She’s okay now. I’ve been with her for 19 years.
“My son’s okay. He never went through the anger process. I just think he was happy and glad I was back out of there.”
However, Mr Spann, who founded the charity Change Your Life Put Down Your Knife, said he now “regrets” leaving Ukraine.
“I have no regrets at all for going, but I have regrets for leaving,” he added.
“I regret leaving those lads. I don’t know how much use I would have been for them, but I feel like I let them down a little bit.
“I do wish I was still there, to be honest.
“I know they’re safe, and they got to their destination safely, so it does make me think I would have been safe, and maybe I shouldn’t have left.”