A 22-YEAR-OLD SOLDIER from Drogheda who fought for Ukraine in Donetsk has been sentenced by the Russian authorities to 14 years imprisonment in a maximum-security penal colony.<\/p>\n
Tiernan O\u2019Donovan allegedly travelled to Ukraine and joined the Chosen Company of international volunteers in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was convicted in absentia by the Supreme Court of the Donetsk People\u2019s Republic (DPR) earlier this week.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan was found guilty under Article 359 of the Russian Criminal Code, which relates to the participation of a mercenary in armed conflicts or military actions.<\/p>\n
The offence carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan had been accused of taking part in military operations against Russian forces near the village of Pervomaiske in Donetsk with the Chosen Company.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Russian Prosecutor General\u2019s Office alleged that he had arrived in Ukraine in June 2023 before undergoing training and fighting against Russian forces until the spring of 2025.<\/p>\n
It claimed that O\u2019Donovan had been paid more than two million rubles (\u20ac21,875) by the Ukrainian military authorities.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor also claimed that he had \u201cactively advertised his crimes\u201d on social media.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the DPR found him guilty of the charge and sentenced him in absentia to 14 years imprisonment in a maximum-security penal colony, according to a statement from the Russian Prosecutor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
It added that O\u2019Donovan, who allegedly used the call sign \u2018The Irishman\u2019, remains on the international wanted list.<\/p>\n
The Chosen Company is a volunteer unit under the command of another Irishman, Ryan O\u2019Leary, which has been fighting for Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n
It was previously reported that the unit had volunteers from more than 31 countries, but the majority of its soldiers were US citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 22-YEAR-OLD SOLDIER from Drogheda who fought for Ukraine in Donetsk has been sentenced by the Russian authorities…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[19173,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,33950,550,208779,7,8,551,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-613815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-army","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-prison","tag-russia","tag-soldier","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-ukraine","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}