Aiden Aslin is a British-born resident of Ukraine. Living in Mykolaiv with his fiancé, he joined the Ukrainian marines in 2018 and was called to the frontline ahead of the Russian invasion in February 2022. He was one of over a thousand soldiers who surrendered after the month-long siege at the Mariupol steelworks, whereupon he was singled out for his British passport. His surrender, captivity, treatment and subsequent release received global media attention.

John Sweeney is a writer and journalist who, when working for the BBC, has challenged dictators, despots, cult leaders, con artists and crooked businessmen for many years. Sweeney has covered wars and chaos in one hundred countries and been undercover to a number of tyrannies, including Chechnya, North Korea and Zimbabwe. The author of fifteen books including the Sunday Times best- seller Killer in the Kremlin, he reports on the war in Ukraine from his twitter handle @johnsweeneyroar