A Melbourne man imprisoned in Russia after being captured fighting for Ukraine has given his first interview since being sentenced to 13 years in jail.
Oscar Jenkins was handed the sentence by Russian authorities in May last year after a trial slammed by the Australian government as a “sham”.
Mr Jenkins has now been interviewed, explaining why he fought for Ukraine and claiming he would gladly fight for Russia.
“I’ve written a statement saying that I’d be happy to fight as a soldier for Russia,” he said.
“But if they don’t trust me or for whatever reason don’t want that, then I can understand.”
Mr Jenkins, a former Melbourne Grammar student, said joining the Ukrainian forces in 2024 “felt like the right thing to do”.
“If a country invades another country, why?” he said.
“And if there’s not a good reason for that, like Taiwan, then that’s something that I should stand up for.
“I’m a young guy. It’s not that my life doesn’t mean anything to me, but sacrifices might need to be made. That’s still the attitude I have.”
The extraordinary interview was held over two days within the prison and conducted by a fellow Australian, Mark Lowe.
Mr Lowe is an English teacher who has been living in Vladivostok for four years and runs a website that reports favourably on Russia and the Putin regime, the ABC reports.
He told the ABC he sought permission from Russian authorities for a year to hold the interview with Mr Jenkins.
“It’s geared to a western audience to enlighten them as to what really goes on in Ukraine,” he told the ABC of his work.
“To give them a different perspective.”
Mr Lowe also said he believed the Russians approved of his “objective” writing on his website, thus gaining their trust to conduct the interview with Mr Jenkins.
Speaking to Mr Lowe, a gaunt-looking Mr Jenkins detailed how he travelled to Ukraine and was ensconced in the warfare.
However, before he joined the force, he had also considered whether he should fight in Myanmar or in Israel.
“I was going to go to Israel. It just felt a little bit too hard for me because I wasn’t Israeli or something. But now I think I could have done it,” he said.
“I just thought if I were going to go to war, then Israel would be a good bet, but I chose Ukraine because it was easier, I think, just fly in and go there.”
Flying from Australia to Poland, Mr Jenkins took a bus to the border where he met with authorities.
“They asked me: ‘What are you going to do’?,” he recalled.
“I said: ‘I’m going to volunteer’ and that was enough.
“I was told I was going to be a machine-gunner on the front … four of us got in the armoured vehicle to go to the position; I was dropped off not knowing that it was essentially Russia, it was a Russian position that I was in already.
“There was a whole bunch of drones, grenades going off from the moment we left that vehicle. There was a lot of chaos.”
After spending four days in a trench with a broken arm and damage to one leg, a man approached him to ask if he “needed a hand”.
“And then we walked five metres forward, 10 metres forward into a blindage [camouflaged dugout], and there were three soldiers there.
“They asked me who I was; I said I was a Ukrainian soldier and then I got captured.”
Mr Jenkins graduated from Melbourne Grammar School in 2010, before studying at Monash University.
He then moved to China where he worked as a teacher for close to a decade.