what the fucking fuck was anyone involved expecting seriously
He’s still alive; that’s better than I would have expected. Or maybe its worse?
Oscar Jenkins, 33, was convicted in a Russian-controlled court in occupied eastern Ukraine on Friday of fighting in an armed conflict as a mercenary.
Mr Jenkins, a teacher from Melbourne, was captured last December in the Luhansk region.
Prosecutors said he arrived in Ukraine in February 2024, alleging he was paid between 600,000 and 800,000 rubles (£5,504 and £7,339) a month to take part in military operations against Russian troops.
The article seems to claim that this guy is a mercenary, but someone in the comments is claiming that this guy is not a mercenary because he is a member of the UAF’s foreign legion. I don’t know if there is any additional context here that I am missing.
Other articles about him definitely mention him being a member of the Ukrainian International Legion.
play stupid games, win stupid prizes
What’s a little contravention of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War between friends?
He’s a mercenary, and Russia already stated that they don’t treat maundering mercenaries as soldiers.
He is a member of the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine and as such is unambiguously not a mercenary by the definition used in the Geneva Convention and so is owed the protections afforded to prisoners of war.
Specifically, article 47 of Protocol 1 is clear that a neccesary condition to be considered a mercenary is that a person:
is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict
The fact that Russia has a history of ignoring this is not the knock-out argument you seem to think it is.
the article literally says he’s a mercenary, try putting more effort into your trolling in the future
Oscar Jenkins, 33, was convicted in a Russian-controlled court in occupied eastern Ukraine on Friday of fighting in an armed conflict as a mercenary.
It says he was convicted in a Russian-controlled court which is not at all the same thing. International law is clear on this and Russia is clearly breeching it.
Try putting some more effort into your trolling, I quoted the actual appropriate law.
If you bothered reading the points in the law you linked, then you’d quickly see that he very much falls under the category of a mercenary. The fact that a bunch of marauders got together and call themselves an “international legion” doesn’t change the nature of what’s happening. Keep on digging though, it’s adorable.
The international legion is a official unit of the armed forces of Ukraine, set up by the Ukrainian MOD. Try again.
They are an official part of the Ukrainian armed forces though