TWO British aid volunteers have gone missing from the frontline in Ukraine, local police have said.
Andrew Bagshaw, 48, and 28-year-old Christopher Parry disappeared on January 6 near Soledar, while helping to evacuate civilians.
The city is in the eastern Bakhmut region, where there has been heavy fighting and evacuations are often carried out under fire from Russian forces as the war rages.
According to Ukrainian police, officers were told at around 5.15pm the following day that the two men, who are “citizens of Great Britain, aged 28 and 48” had vanished.
The police say they trying to find the pair.
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Parry, a running coach from Cheltenham, recently told Sky News that his job was to drive about an hour to frontline villages to evacuate civilians.
He said: “I take each day as it comes. Sometimes when you see some pretty terrible things it does stay with you, for example the burnt out corpse of a mother who we had been evacuating.
“But you you’ve got a job. You’re in a position of care and as soon as you pick these people up you’ve got to get out and get away from the artillery, which is constantly going off around us.
“When you get back and think ‘that was kind of close that was only 100 metres away from us’ that's when you think maybe my luck might run out but it’ s worth it to save these people.”
He has been raising money through JustGiving to buy a new off-road vehicle to carry out his work.
Bagshaw lives in Christchurch, New Zealand and has been working as part of a team of Ukrainian and international volunteers delivering aid and evacuating citizens, reports Stuff.co.nz.
Back in August, he described the horror of the frontline where he was working.
“The closer you get to the east, the worse it gets," he said.
“There’s just massive destruction, basically. Every building is damaged to some extent, windows blown out or demolished.”
His parents Philip and Dame Susan Bagshaw, who founded of the Canterbury Charity Hospital, confirmed their son had been reported missing.
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In a statement they said he was “a very intelligent, independently minded person”, who went to Ukraine as a volunteer to help people.
“He was born in the UK, and Philip and Susan are very grateful for all the agencies from both London and NZ, who are working so hard to find him.
“Andrew’s parents love him dearly and are immensely proud of all the work he has been doing delivering food and medicines and assisting elderly people move from near the battlefront of the war.”
Tenby Powell, founder of Kiwi KARE, a charity working with volunteers in Ukraine, said his organisation had been supporting Bagshaw and funded a vehicle for him to use for the evacuations.
He said Bagshaw had not been heard from for 48 hours and has been conducting “hot extractions” in Soledar.
That time frame was concerning giving the environment he was working in, said Powell.
“I got to know Andrew reasonably well. He was absolutely dedicated to that work," said Powell.
"He did really extraordinary work under difficult circumstances.”
The Foreign Office said: “We are supporting the families of two British men who have gone missing in Ukraine.”
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky said Vladimir Putin's troops have reduced the eastern city of Bakhmut to "burnt ruins" a
Ukrainian soldiers have compared the scenes to First World War-style trench conflict.
The city - once home to 70,000 people - has been bombarded by intense shelling for more than six months as Russia pounds Ukrainian trenches day and night with artillery.
