Shaun Pinner
Shaun Pinner is a former soldier of the British Army who joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a contracted fighter in 2018 and fought during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the siege of Mariupol, he was captured and sentenced to death in a show trial by the Supreme Court of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), but was freed in September in a prisoner exchange. In December 2022 he was awarded the state ‘Order of Courage, 3rd Degree’ in a decree by President Zelensky for “selfless acts in the defence and sovereignty of Ukraine”. Biography His service in the Ukrainian marines makes him an active-duty soldier protected by the Geneva conventions on prisoners of war. However, Russian state media has portrayed him as a mercenary. Another British citizen, Aiden Aslin and the Moroccan Saadoun Brahim, received identical verdicts in the same trial. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss tweeted that: "The judgement against them is an egregious breach of the Geneva convention." The defence attorney did not even ask for an explanation as to why the existing arguments against mercenary status were not been taken into consideration, simply saying instead that "the guilt of my client has been fully