Two Britons who nearly died fighting in Ukraine reveal why they have returned to war zone – and issue warning about Russia
Two Britons who nearly died fighting in Ukraine have told why they have returned to the war-torn country – and warn urgent help is needed on the frontline in the battle against Russia.
Shareef Amin was seriously wounded by Russian fire after answering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for foreigners to join the Ukrainian military in 2022.
The 41-year-old from Bristol lost part of his hand and his right leg was paralysed from the knee down. He also suffered punctured lungs and severe injuries to his shoulder and forearm.
Recovering in hospital after he was ambushed. Pic: Shareef Amin
Fellow Briton Shaun Pinner was captured and tortured by Russian forces after fighting alongside Ukrainian troops in 2022.
The 50-year-old from Hertfordshire was imprisoned for five months – during which time he said he was “electrocuted, starved, beaten… and stabbed” – before he was released in a prisoner swap.
Speaking just before the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr Amin and Mr Pinner told Sky News there is no prospect of an end to the war anytime soon – and fear Vladimir Putin will be free to invade more of Europe if urgent help isn’t sent.
“We need support – from Britain, America, Europe – whether it’s bombs, helmets, body armour, or medical equipment, there isn’t enough,” Mr Amin says.
“This is a really dangerous situation. If Russia gets the upper hand and they take Ukraine, they’re not going to stop at that.
“The British and the Europeans need to know this is all of our wars.”
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Pic: Shareef Amin (left)
Mr Pinner says Ukraine is “probably a year off being able to produce enough shells to be able to support” itself.
“We’re going to go through a really tough time before then,” he adds.
“I’ve never lost faith that Ukraine can win. But we’ve got ammo shortages on the frontline that are a real worry. How can you fight with one hand tied behind your back?”
Pic: Shaun Pinner
‘Chaotic’ first months in Ukraine
Mr Amin – who spent 13 years in the British military – says he travelled to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia in March 2022 after watching a speech by President Zelenskyy on Instagram.
“I managed to get hold of a group of British guys through WhatsApp and TikTok, and by 11 March we were in Lviv,” he says.
He described his first two months in the country as “chaotic” as he and others felt there wasn’t enough time to go to the British embassy and join the foreign legion through official channels.
“We almost got arrested three times at gunpoint, because we weren’t there under official paperwork – we just had passports, uniforms, and military kit,” he says.
Mr Amin says he initially decided to do some humanitarian work instead, delivering medical supplies around the country, until he was asked to teach one of the territorial units in Western tactics.
By mid-2022, Mr Amin was on the frontline but left after a few months to sign up officially to the Ukrainian military.
He went in search of more specialised work and joined the Main Directorate of Intelligence Unit (GUR) with some fellow Britons.
Pic: Shareef Amin (left)
‘All of a sudden, there was this explosion’
On the frontline in November 2022, Mr Amin’s team was ambushed.
After his team found itself in a line of trees, beyond which there was nothing but flat land, “three or four tanks” emerged and began shooting – followed by artillery, drones and laser-guided missiles, he says.
He and other members of his team were hit. Some of them were killed.
“All of a sudden, there was this explosion,” he recalls.
“The air got sucked out of my lungs and all I could see was a flash of light and it felt like I was pulled underground like an empty can.”
Pic: Shareef Amin
‘He’s not going to make it’
Mr Amin says he was hit by a round of fire that had gone underground before exploding and ricocheting back up through his body armour.
When he eventually got to an ambulance and was taken to hospital, he heard a doctor say “he’s not going to make it” – but he survived despite more than 20 pieces of metal being pulled out of his back.
He spent six weeks in a hospital in Odesa, hoping to recover and quickly return to the frontline.
But he says: “You don’t really come to the realisation your body is destroyed.”
In December 2022, he was flown to the UK for further treatment – but went back to Ukraine in the summer of 2023.
He says he is working with intelligence units there and helping with medical evacuations on the frontline.
“Psychologically, I had to have that purpose again,” Mr Amin says.
“The idea of actually going home and giving up was a no-go.
“I’ve had my ups and downs, but the idea of coming back and still being able to wear the uniform has kept me sane.”
‘You can’t train for pain of torture and starvation’
Mr Pinner was already in Ukraine when Russia invaded on 24 February 2022.
Having spent nine years in the British Army, he had been living with his fiancée in Mariupol since 2018 and was serving in the Ukrainian military.
“I was on a routine deployment when the full-scale invasion happened,” he recalls.
Shaun Pinner (right) and fellow Briton Aiden Aslin (left). Pic: Shaun Pinner
Mr Pinner says he was the first foreigner to become a commander on the frontline as he spoke Russian and had previous military experience.
But in April 2022, he and four other British soldiers were captured and taken prisoner.
He was “electrocuted, starved, beaten, tortured, stabbed in the leg,” he tells Sky News, before being put on a show trial and sentenced to death in Russia’s self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk.
“I wasn’t expecting the brutality of it,” he says.
“You can’t train for pain. The worst torture was starvation… thinking about food – it’s with you every day, it’s still with me now.”
Shaun Pinner in captivity in Donetsk. Pic: Reuters
‘If I got executed, I was dying for a cause’
Mr Pinner says that the Russian he learned as a resident of Mariupol helped him to decipher what was going on during his captivity.
Reflecting on challenges he’d faced outside the military – such as relatives dying, and previous relationship breakdowns – helped keep things in perspective, he adds.
“I was never as low as that when I was in captivity, because I knew if I did get executed, I was dying for a cause,” Mr Pinner says.
He and the other four Britons were unexpectedly freed as part of a prisoner exchange in September 2022.
He was reunited with his family in the UK before returning to Ukraine to live with his wife the following month.
Pictured with his family in the UK in 2022. Pic: Shaun Pinner
‘I don’t talk to Westerners who’ve just turned up’
Mr Pinner admits being “nervous coming across the border” for the first time after he was freed.
But he says: “My life has changed now. I’m not fighting but I’m helping in another capacity.
“I try to talk about what it’s actually like to live here – and what it was like before the invasion.
“I try to dispel Putin’s narratives on social media because I’m now in a position where I can say, ‘actually that’s not correct, because I’m here and I know’.”
Speaking from Dnipro, where he warns an air raid siren might interrupt the call, he says he discourages any foreigners he speaks to who say they want to come and fight.
“There are some good guys here,” he says. “But they’ve either been here a long time or they’re married to Ukrainians.”
He adds: “I don’t talk to Westerners who have just turned up. You don’t want people coming over who just want to update their YouTube.”
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Military analyst Sean Bell agrees with Mr Pinner’s view about Westerners joining the fight.
He stresses the Ukrainians have enough personnel already, and ex-soldiers from NATO countries fighting in a war NATO has refused to enter can cause problems.
Bell says there is even a problem with donating shells, as they encourage attritional warfare, “which generally favours the bigger side” – Russia.
He adds that while the West readily donated precision weapons, as well as long-range missiles and tanks at the start of the conflict, now the UK has “emptied its war chest” of the older, stockpiled equipment, and “it’s got to a stage where we’re not comfortable with giving any more”.
New weapons systems risk falling into the wrong hands and compromising security, he adds, so most focus has now fallen on the US, which is trying to get a $60bn (£47bn) military aid package through Congress.
But Bell warns: “If funding was the only issue, the EU has already promised that much. It’s about converting dollars into weapons. They’re built to order and that all takes years not weeks.”
Mr Amin has written a book about his experience in Ukraine, Freedom At All Costs: A British Veteran’s Experiences Of The War In Ukraine.
Mr Pinner has also written a book, Live. Fight. Survive. He also teaches English and gives talks to Ukrainian soldiers.
At a community food table in Staffordshire, produce is being handed out for free.
“I need to come here otherwise we’d be living on bread,” Rebecca Flynn told Sky News.
The 51-year-old said: “I’m earning pretty decent money, but it’s not enough.”
Rebecca Flynn
It gives you an insight into just how deeply the cost of living crisis is biting – because Rebecca is working full-time as an office manager for a day service for people with learning difficulties.
On top of that, she has a second job going door-to-door on evenings and weekends, selling cosmetics and homeware.
“There’s nothing more I can do. Unless I win the lottery or get another job. It should be noticed that people are in this state,” she says.
“Local councils, local governments, they need to see what’s going on, come to ground level. It’s 2025. It shouldn’t be like this.”
But it’s not just Rebecca working all hours and needing food handouts to survive.
Alex Chapman is the co-founder of the Norton Canes Community Food Table, and says a third of the people who use it are working full-time.
“It’s mad that you’re working a good job and you think you’d be able to afford everything and go on holiday and everything like that, but in reality they’re struggling to put food on the table,” he says.
“We’re seeing a massive increase in the people that are using the food table. We see them in their work outfits. Professionals, nurses – you don’t expect them to be struggling because they’re working full-time. People who aren’t working – you expect them to be struggling. But it’s across the board.”
Cannock Chase
The food table is in Cannock Chase.
Sky News analysis of local authorities gives an insight into why people are feeling dissatisfied their salaries are no longer delivering the comfortable lifestyles they thought hard work and a good job would deliver.
Over the past few years, Cannock Chase has gone from being a middle-class part of Britain to one of the lowest-earning areas in the UK.
In 2021, UK average annual salaries were just short of £26,000 – Cannock Chase was almost identical, according to Sky News analysis of Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Since then, the UK average wage has increased by 21.6% – or more than £5,000 a year – keeping pace with high inflation.
But in Cannock Chase, salaries have only risen by 8.4% – meaning on average people are now £300 worse off per month than the average worker across the UK.
SEE HOW YOUR AREA HAS COPED WITH THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS
It won’t have escaped your attention that prices have gone up, by a lot – by a fifth since 2021, the highest sustained rate since the 1990s – with some of the biggest rises among essentials like energy and food.
But, across the whole country, wages have actually done a pretty good job at keeping up with inflation. The problem is that the wage increase is an average, made up of highs and lows, while the price rises affect us more uniformly.
That means if you haven’t had a pay-rise, you will quite quickly find that you can’t afford as many of the things you used to.
People in places like Brentwood in Essex, the Cotswolds in rural Gloucestershire, and Melton in Leicestershire, have seen their wages increase at twice the rate of prices in the last few years, on average.
But on the other end of the scale are places like Cannock Chase, where inflation has been more than double the rate of wage increases.
It used to be a place where average earnings pretty much exactly reflected the UK midpoint. Now, people in Cannock are about £300 worse-off every month than the average person.
See how your area compares with our look-up.
Louise Schwartz, who has two children, describes herself as middle-class. After 20 years in the classroom she now has three jobs, working 50 hours a week as a teaching coach, at a software firm and giving private music lessons.
Her husband is an estate agent. They have a mortgage and three cars and together earn around £80,000 a year.
She says the family loves travelling together but can’t afford to go on holiday this year: “It makes me feel sad for my kids, more than anything, that we can’t give them a week away.
“We have food on the table, we’ve got heating, we’ve got cars to drive. But there are definitely some luxuries that we’ve cut back on recently.
“We don’t do expensive supermarkets. We don’t do expensive brands. We do whatever’s on offer for that particular week. My eldest son has started driving, which has then had an impact on my daughter’s horse-riding lessons.”
Louise Schwartz
Louise adds that the family have a hot tub in the garden that they bought years ago, but because of the cost of electricity, they don’t use it.
I ask her: “What does it say that a teacher and an estate agent both working full time can’t afford to go on holiday this year?”
She replies: “I think a lot of people might not be surprised by that because I think people are probably in a similar position but maybe we just don’t talk about it.”
Full-time workers tell us again and again they thought their lifestyles would be more comfortable – that the work ethic would be delivering more than it is.
Heidi Boot
It seems the dissatisfaction is not only what one person described as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, but also the lack of what people refer to as “pleasure money”.
Heidi Boot is what you might call the backbone of the middle classes – running a small business full-time called HB Aesthetics, a salon that does eyebrows, eyelashes and nails.
“I feel like everybody is stretching their appointments. People are working so hard for their money and they’ve got nothing to show for it. They’ve paid all their bills and now they’ve got nothing left to spend on themselves,” she says.
“It shouldn’t be that way. But because I see it all the time I feel like it’s just the normal now.”
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The constituency of Cannock Chase has always voted the way of the country – and at the last election showed significant support for Reform.
The financial woes will worry the government, which insists it’s taking action to give workers more money in their pockets.
But there’s no denying the despairing mood of middle England in the political battlegrounds that brought Labour to power.
A yellow heat health alert is in place from midday for most of England, with temperatures expected to peak in the mid-30s tomorrow.
Parts of the country are facing a fourth heatwave of the summer, where highs pass a threshold on three consecutive days.
Check the weather forecast where you are
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July: Why does it feel hotter in the UK?
Sky News meteorologist Christopher England said the high pressure that brought the warmth of the last few days via the “heat dome” effect is moving east, as low pressure moves in towards the west.
This will bring even warmer air up from the near continent, making it hotter for most over the next few days.
“Southern Britain can expect temperatures widely into the low 30s then, perhaps exceeding 35C (95F) in places,” Mr England said.
“There’s around a 10% chance Wales may exceed its august peak temperature of 35.2C recorded at Hawarden on 2 August 1990.”
He also predicts “some very muggy nights” in the South, with temperatures quite widely holding above 20C (68F) in towns and cities, known as “tropical nights”.
A yellow health alert is in place from 12pm on Monday through to Wednesday evening for most of England – covering all regions except for the North West and North East.
The warning issued by the UK Health Security Agency means it expects heat-related issues such as an increase in deaths of over-65s, a higher demand on health services and an increased risk of overheating for vulnerable people.
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Drought in England explained
The Met Office’s criteria for a heatwave are met when temperatures are above a certain level for three consecutive days. This threshold varies from 25C to 28C (77F to 82F) depending on location.
Meteorologist Tom Morgan said there would be a “North-South split in the weather” today.
He said it would be “quite cloudy across Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England, the rain tending to come and go, but most persistent in western Scotland”.
The remnants of ex-tropical storm Dexter has headed towards the UK from the Atlantic.
This could bring the potential of rain and thunderstorms tonight and into tomorrow.
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