{"id":326259,"date":"2025-08-07T22:01:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T22:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326259\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T22:01:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T22:01:19","slug":"british-father-killed-by-drone-while-fighting-in-ukraine-wife-says-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326259\/","title":{"rendered":"British father killed by drone while fighting in Ukraine, wife says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Louisa King<\/p>\n

BBC News, Liverpool<\/p>\n

\"StephanieStephanie Boyce-Williams<\/p>\n

Stephanie Boyce-Williams said she pleaded with her husband not to go to Ukraine<\/p>\n

A British father who volunteered to fight for Ukraine in the war against Russia has been killed by a drone strike, his wife has said.<\/p>\n

Alan Robert Williams, 35, from Moreton in Wirral went to the country after losing his job despite having no military experience and his family’s pleas not to go, Stephanie Boyce-Williams said.<\/p>\n

She said fellow fighters contacted her to say he had been killed in a Russian drone attack in the Kharkiv region by adding “it doesn’t feel real” and she was “in limbo” waiting for official confirmation of his death.<\/p>\n

A Foreign Office spokesman said it was “supporting the family of a British man who is missing in Ukraine, and are in contact with the local authorities”.<\/p>\n

\"Stephanie<\/p>\n

Stephanie Boyce-Williams said her husband’s death “doesn’t seem real”<\/p>\n

Mr Williams left his wife and their 12-year-old daughter in the UK on 7 May to travel Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The family said they lost contact with him on 2 July after he set off on a mission, and were later told on 14 July he was listed as missing action, and two weeks later a member of his unit confirmed he had died. <\/p>\n

Ms Boyce-Williams told BBC Radio Merseyside<\/a>: “I was sitting at home with my oldest son when I got the text through to say they had important information and could they call me so I knew instantly.”<\/p>\n

She said she and others in the family had tried to convince her husband not to go to fight but he was determined.<\/p>\n

“We were all absolutely devastated when he told us [he was going to fight],” she said.<\/p>\n

“We spent time trying to convince him not to go, telling him how it would affect us and how it would impact our daughter, and everything else back home.<\/p>\n

“But he was such a strong-willed man that once he got something in his mind there was no way you were changing it.”<\/p>\n

“He wanted to help civilians, especially the children,” she said.<\/p>\n

‘Dangerous’ <\/p>\n

She said she had been in touch with him every day but when she last spoke to him, she knew something was different.<\/p>\n

“I could tell by the tone of his voice when he phoned me to ask permission for me to put my mum down as an emergency contact that there was a bit more to it,” she said.<\/p>\n

She said he explained to her in his last text that: “I want to be straight with you this is dangerous”.<\/p>\n

“Once it passed the three-day mark, which is what he originally said he was going to be out for, I was literally checking my phone every single day,” Ms Boyce-Williams said.<\/p>\n

“I said to one of my friends I want my phone to ring and for it to be his ringtone, I do not want a Ukrainian phone number coming up on my phone.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Louisa King BBC News, Liverpool Stephanie Boyce-Williams Stephanie Boyce-Williams said she pleaded with her husband not to go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-326259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114989740171690434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}