A body has been found in Ukraine in the search for a British man who was reported missing a month ago.
Relatives of Daniel Burke lost contact with him in mid-August while he was on his most recent visit to Ukraine.
Police officers searching for the 36-year-old, from south Manchester, had been informed by Ukrainian authorities they had found a body.
Det Supt Lewis Hughes, Greater Manchester police’s (GMP) lead for disaster victim identification, said: “This is an upsetting time for Daniel’s family, we have family liaison officers in contact with the family and offering support.
“My team and I are working with the Ukrainian authorities to make formal identification with a view to repatriating Daniel following that process. Daniel’s family have asked for privacy at this difficult time.”
Burke was reported missing on 16 August. His mother, Diane, told the Manchester Evening News last week the family had been told by Ukrainian police that officers searched his Zaporizhzhia apartment and found it empty, with no signs of a break-in and the door triple locked.
She said authorities were using CCTV to try to trace his movements on 11 August, when he was last seen, and she said the last time she spoke to him he “sounded on good form”.
Burke arrived in Ukraine at the beginning of the war and formed his own volunteer military unit, named the Dark Angels, but later switched to frontline rescue and evacuation work. He has travelled back to Manchester several times during that period.
He had previously served in the Parachute regiment of the British army. In 2020, the Crown Prosecution Service abandoned controversial terrorism charges against him and two others who were accused of helping a fourth to travel to Syria to fight with the Kurdish YPG – an enemy of the Islamic State group.
Burke was arrested in Dover in 2019 and had been accused of wanting to travel to Syria himself as well as helping Dan Newey leave the UK, a month after Turkish forces began an incursion into Syria, during the conflict there.
He had fought against Islamic State with the YPG in Syria himself in 2017 and 2018 – at a time when the Royal Air Force was involved in bombing the Islamist group, and British and other special forces were secretly deployed on the ground, training Kurdish forces.
