For six months, Otilia Ante barely slept, enduring an agony that began when her son disappeared. Or, more accurately, when Vladimir Putin kidnapped him.

It happened on July 18 last year, on the Colombian’s journey home after nine months fighting for Kyiv in Ukraine. 

Doña Otilia, as she is known in the Colombian city of Popayán, had braced herself countless times for the possibility that her “hijito” (her “little boy”) might be killed in the war.

She never imagined danger would come after he laid down his arms, or that her son would be at the centre of an international scandal, albeit one that has received little attention. And that he would appear on a video along with a compatriot speaking from a Russian jail.