A British soldier captured by Russian-backed forces in Ukraine said he was forced to listen to ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” on repeat while being tortured.
“I thought I was going to die. It was hell on Earth,” Shaun Pinner, 48, one of five Brits freed last week, told The Sun.
“The past six months have been the worst days of my life. I never want to listen to an ABBA song again or see a loaf of bread. I just am so lucky to be home,” he continued.
“I hated them anyway so it really was torture.”
In addition to ABBA, he said, the ruthless Russians also forced him to listen to Cher’s “Believe” at another location.
Pinner, who was flown home by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea soccer club, was captured during the siege of Mariupol in April.
He said he survived the ordeal by eating stale bread and drinking dirty water.
Pinner described in haunting detail how he was electrocuted, stabbed and subjected to mock executions after being sentenced to death in June along with fellow countryman Aiden Aslin.
“I knew it was bad so I called my wife and I gave her my death message. But she didn’t even cry,” said Pinner, who was on the Ukrainian army as a contract soldier.
“She just screamed at me that I was a warrior and that I would survive. Those were the last words I heard from her and they kept me going,” he told the UK news outlet.
“It turned into carnage as the Russians ambushed us with mortar bombs and artillery. There were so many bodies, it looked like something out of a zombie apocalypse,” Pinner said.
“I was surrounded by Russian separatists. They stripped me and put a knife in my thigh for no reason. They beat the daylights out of me for 20 minutes,” he continued.
The former soldier described how his captors electrocuted him.
“It was a ferocious shock. They did it for 40 seconds each time. It seemed like they were just doing it for fun,” Pinner told The Sun.
“A guy came in and put a pistol to the back of my head, cocked it and said, ‘You are going to die now!’” he said.
“I thought that was the end for me. He then started laughing and said he was joking and pistol whipped me.”
In addition to Pinner and Aslin, fellow Brits Dylan Healy, Andrew Hill and John Harding were released after Saudi Arabia brokered a secretive deal between Russia and Ukraine.
The men arrived back in the UK Thursday.
