A terrible injustice: Why our government owes Afghan war heroes a great debt

Betraying these loyal soldiers who sacrificed so much for us by denying them sanctuary would leave a serious stain on Britain’s reputation, writes Tim Willasey-Wilsey

CF333, one of two units known as the ‘Triples’, was created at the Foreign Office’s request in 2002 as a counternarcotics unit (PA)

In 1989, British newspaper readers were alternately fascinated and horrified by a libel case involving the author Count Nikolai Tolstoy and the former British soldier Lord Aldington. Tolstoy had alleged that Britain had been complicit in sending 70,000 Cossacks to their deaths at the hands of NKVD execution squads in the Soviet Union.

His book, Victims of Yalta, published in 1977, became a bestseller. At the end of the Second World War, the Cossacks found themselves as prisoners of war, held by British troops in Austria having fought for the Germans (not because of any Nazi sympathies, but because of their hatred of Joseph Stalin and his treatment of Ukraine in the 1930s).

It was not the most glorious moment in British history, but some context is required. In 1945, there was not much sympathy in Britain for anyone who had fought for the Nazis, especially as the details of the extermination camps began to emerge. Furthermore, the Soviets had been our allies and 70,000 was a lot of mouths to feed in post-war Europe when rationing would continue in Britain until 1954. British officers and ministers must have calculated that forced repatriation would involve hardship and punishment, but not death.