June 15 (Reuters) - Two U.S. residents who made a trip to Ukraine as volunteer warriors against Russian powers have been absent for a week and are dreaded caught, relatives said on Wednesday.
Alexander Drueke, 39, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Andy Huynh, 27, of Hartselle, Alabama, were toward the end in touch with their families on June 8 and didn't get back from a mission around the Kharkiv district of eastern Ukraine.
Reports that the two had been taken detainees of battle by Russia are unsubstantiated, the families and a U.S. State Department representative said.
"What we know formally right now from the State Department is that Andy and Alex are missing," Joy Black, Andy's fiancee, said by telephone.
"We don't have an affirmation for anything past that. Clearly, the more drawn out the hunt goes the more we begin to think about different situations," she added.
Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative Maria Zakharova said the United States had not reached Russia with respect to the reports of the U.S. contenders.
"I don't have that data, I actually look at each day, and I'll really take a look at today. We make all data about the destiny of confined soldiers of fortune or those condemned to the preliminary public," the RIA news office detailed Zakharova as saying.
Russia's protection service didn't quickly answer a solicitation for input.
Assuming the pair have been caught, they would be the first affirmed U.S. residents to have been taken as detainees of battle in the contention that started on Feb. 24 with Russian President Vladimir Putin requesting an attack of its neighbor.
White House public safety representative John Kirby said that assuming the reports are valid, the United States "will give our best" to get them back.
Last week, two British residents and a Moroccan were condemned to death by a dissenter court in the unnoticed Russian-speaking Donetsk People's Republic subsequent to being found battling for Ukraine.
Lois Drueke, Alexander's mom, said she had been in touch with the U.S. Government office for Ukraine, situated in Poland, which was looking for the pair.
The two men had told their families on June 8 they would be going disconnected for a couple of days, yet didn't give subtleties, inspired by a paranoid fear of their interchanges being caught.
Drueke served two visits in Iraq, the last as a lead-heavy weapons specialist in Baghdad in 2008-09, his mom said. Huynh is a previous U.S. Marine who left the assistance in 2018, his fiancee said.
They said the men didn't have the foggiest idea about one another prior to meeting in Ukraine, however, both felt a sense of urgency to help the public authority in the wake of seeing pictures of regular citizen setbacks as Russia withdrew from towns outside Kyiv in late March.
"At the point when Andy saw this recording emerging from Ukraine he said he was unable to rest, couldn't eat, was simply consumed by the repulsiveness that these honest regular people were going through," said Black.
Russia denies going after regular people and has blamed Western residents for going about as "hired soldiers", saying Western help for Kyiv is hauling out the contention and prompting more losses.
"As a mother obviously I didn't need my youngster at risk," Lois Drueke said. "However, I realize that it was truly essential to Alex, he needed a reason to his life and he felt that this was great and respectable."