Supported Moscow separatists in the east Ukraine Today, the trial of three Britons, a Croat and a Swede, accused of fighting on the side of the Ukrainian army, began.

Trial of John Harding, Andrew Hill, Dylan Healy from Great Britain, as well as Croat Vekoslav Preberg and Swede Matias Gustafsson has begun in the “Supreme Court” of the separatist region of Donetsk, Russian media reported.

Harding, Preberg and Gustafsson, captured near the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, which has been besieged and fired upon by the Russian military for weeks, face the death penalty, according to a judge’s verdict, TASS reports. .

According to RIA-Novosti, the three men facing execution are being prosecuted for trying to “seize power by force” and “participating in armed conflict as mercenaries.”

Briton Andrew Hill is accused only of mercenary activities, while Dylan Healy is being prosecuted for “participating in the recruitment of mercenaries” for Ukraine, RIA-Novosti reports.

The court announced that the trial of the five defendants would not be repeated until early October, without explaining the reasons for the delay. All of them pleaded not guilty, according to Russian media.

By early June, two British militants and a Moroccan had already been sentenced to death by Donetsk separatists. Three men appealed the decision.

A moratorium on the death penalty has been in place in Russia since 1997, but not in the two breakaway territories of eastern Ukraine.

Source: APE/MEB