Three Americans Captured by Russian Forces, Held in Prison with ‘No Running Water’
Three Americans who were captured by Russian forces in Ukraine months ago are believed to be in a prison with “no running water,” the family of one of the Americans said Thursday in a press release.
Former U.S. soldier Alex Drueke, one of the imprisoned Americans, spoke to his mother, Lois “Bunny” Drueke, and a U.S. State Department case manager on the phone Thursday, the family said in the release.
“Several things he said seem to indicate they are still in the Donetsk region of Ukraine,” Bunny Drueke said. “When he was able to call two weeks ago, he said they had been moved to an actual prison, so we weren’t sure if they had maybe been relocated to Russia. But now I don’t think they have.”
Alex Drueke, from Tuscaloosa, Ala., was posted in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in June when he went on a mission and didn’t return, according to Reuters. He was posted with Andy Huynh, from Hartselle, Ala., who also disappeared.
The men had volunteered to fight the invading Russian troops alongside Ukrainian soldiers.
Another American, Grady Kurpasi, has also disappeared in Ukraine, and the U.S. is trying to determine if he was also taken prisoner, according to CBS.
Drueke and Huynh are being held in a prison with an unidentified third American, the aunt of Alex Drueke, Dianna Shaw, said.
Alex Drueke said the third American “was born in Rwanda and has American citizenship,” according to Shaw.
The captured Americans spend their time playing “mind games” and chess made out of trash, she said she was told.
Alex Drueke told his mother about a “nearby bombing of a water filtration plant that left a lot of Donetsk without running water, so they have been given bottled water the past couple of days.”
An anonymous comrade of Drueke and Huynh told the Telegraph the men had been captured “after running into a much larger Russian force during a battle” in Izbytske, a city five miles away from the Russian border. They were on a mission with ten men and encountered a 100-man unit of Russians with tanks, he told the outlet.
A Russian tank fired at the men, and Drueke and Huynh disappeared in a cloud of smoke with no remains, the comrade told the outlet.
Drueke also kept pressing his mother about how U.S. media was covering the war and their captivity, according to the press release.
“While it sounds like Alex to want to know about this, we also assume this is something his captors wanted him to ask because he kept returning to the subject throughout the call,” Shaw said.
The State Department has not confirmed the men are in Donetsk.
President Joe Biden said June 17 that he had been “briefed” on the missing Americans but that he didn’t “know where they are.”
“I want to reiterate, Americans should not be going to Ukraine now. I’ll say it again, Americans should not be going to Ukraine now,” Biden said.
