Reports have emerged in local UK press that some English mercenaries are fighting onbehalf of Russia in Ukraine and have been labelled traitors back home.
The fighters identified include a jobless mercenary who has been disowned by his father and a former National Front member have been labelled an ‘absolute disgrace’ after becoming the first two British men known to be fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Ben Stimson, 48, posted a video on social media this weekend of him standing in front of a Russian flag wearing military fatigues alongside Aiden Minnis, 37, saying: ‘Yes, yes, I’m back in Russia, I’m back in uniform.’
Stimson has posted a number of videos online since he fled to Donetsk in February to join Russian forces, including a footage released last night which showed frontline soldiers walking past two dead bodies.
In one of his videos, he declares: ‘Every man takes his choice… a lot of us, the foreign volunteers, have chosen to come over to this side, to the Russian side.’
Stimson, who had previously been jailed for assisting pro-Russian militia forces in the Donbass region in 2015, is currently fighting Ukrainian soldiers with the Pyatnashka brigade.
His ‘best British friend in the Russian army’ Minnis has been described as a former drug addict and convicted thug from Chippenham, who calls himself a ‘Z Patriot’ and a ‘sapper in the Russian army’.
The Wiltshire man has also been active on social media recently, championing Putin, hailing the Russian leader as ‘still the greatest politician on earth’ in one of his posts.
Former British Army commander Colonel Richard Kemp furiously called for the pair to be arrested, raging: ‘These two are an absolute disgrace and are traitors who upon their return to the UK should be arrested and jailed.’
Stimson was jailed for five years and four months for terror offences in 2017, after he went to the conflict zone in the Donbass region in 2015 for four months and assisted the anti-government militia in Ukraine, the year after Russia annexed Crimea.