A FATHER has left behind his young family in Jersey for a daring rescue mission to save women and children stranded in war-torn Ukraine.
The former soldier, who has asked the JEP to conceal his identity, says he will arm himself with a Kalashnikov and join a group of volunteers extracting people from cities under siege by Russian forces.
In an exclusive interview, he said he was prepared to stay and fight after completing the mission, adding that he expects to ‘go out there with my magazine full and go back with my magazine empty’.
The Islander, who left Jersey yesterday, told this newspaper: ‘My daughter knows, my mum knows half of what I am doing, the person I live with knows a lot but the other people who know me do not know.
‘I need to go into Ukraine twice to two different cities to take out two women with four kids.
‘Because I know a person who knows a person who knows a person I can go in, out, in, out like a ghost. Nobody knows.
‘One of the cities was attacked and occupied and is not safe at all at the moment but I need to check the latest situation.’
He added: ‘Am I worried? I cannot say I am worried. You can have an accident in the kitchen, you can slip over in the bathroom, a lot of people die everyday because they cross the streets and do not look. You die. What is important is what you leave behind.’
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that he would consider any third-party declaration of a no-fly zone over Ukraine as participation in the war there, while Ukrainian officials blamed Russian shelling for breaching a ceasefire arranged in two cities to evacuate civilians.
The struggle to enforce the ceasefire in Mariupol, a strategic port in the south east, and the eastern city of Volnovakha, showed the fragility of efforts to stop fighting across Ukraine, as the number of people fleeing the country reached 1.4 million just ten days after Russian forces invaded.
Mr Putin accused Ukraine of sabotaging the evacuation and even claimed Ukraine’s leadership was calling into question the future of the country’s statehood, saying that ‘if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience’.
Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said it had agreed with Ukraine on evacuation routes out of Volnovakha and Mariupol, the site of growing misery amid an ongoing assault that created desperate scenes at hospitals and raised the prospect of food and water shortages for hundreds of thousands of people in freezing weather.
In comments carried on Ukrainian television, Mariupol mayor Vadym Boychenko said thousands of people had gathered for safe passage out of the city and buses were departing when shelling began.
‘We value the life of every inhabitant of Mariupol and we cannot risk it, so we stopped the evacuation,’ he said.
