‘It’s just cold. I don’t like the cold’: The haunting plight of Oscar Jenkins

Then comes a moment of unexpected clarity: “I don’t want a world where people kill each other. I would rather have a world where there’s all peace, security, freedom. The best, the best world.”

Captured in the eastern town of Makiivka in December, Jenkins was at first paraded on social media and then, just as quickly, disappeared. False rumours of his death circulated until, in February, he again appeared on pro-Russian Telegram accounts with a broken arm in a proof-of-life video.

He was formally charged with fighting as a mercenary in April and put on trial by a Russian-backed court in the occupied Luhansk region. On Friday, he was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum-security penal colony.

During the hearing, he stood behind glass in jeans and a striped jumper, his voice flat and apologetic.

“I feel sorry that I participated in a potentially violent way,” he said, his comments sounding rehearsed. “I am not a Ukrainian nationalist, my ideas are more global. I hope everyone in the world can have peace without war.”

British fighter Shaun Pinner, who spent months in Russian captivity, warned that such performances were choreographed. “They break you first,” he told this masthead last month. “And then they parade you.”

Pinner, who fought with Ukraine’s marines and, in 2022, was sentenced to death by a separatist court in Donetsk before being returned to the United Kingdom in a prisoner swap, has since spoken publicly about the conditions inside Russian captivity – physical abuse, mock executions, starvation. His testimony casts a long shadow over Jenkins’ case, fuelling concerns that the Australian could face a similar fate, or worse.

In Canberra, Foreign Minister Penny Wong called Jenkins’ trial “a sham” and said the Australian, having served in Ukraine’s regular armed forces, must be afforded prisoner-of-war protections under the Geneva Conventions.

“Russia is obligated to treat him in accordance with international humanitarian law, including humane treatment,” she said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese echoed those concerns, calling the sentence “an outrage” and “a continuation of the way they have behaved, abrogating their responsibilities”.

But Russia does not recognise foreign fighters in Ukraine as lawful combatants. Instead, it categorises them as criminals or paid mercenaries – a stance that strips them of POW protections and makes them pawns in a wider geopolitical game. Moscow claimed Jenkins was paid up to 800,000 roubles ($15,000) a month and arrived via a recruiting centre in Ternopil, in western Ukraine. From there, he was sent east, where he served with the 66th Separate Mechanised Brigade in the Donbas.

Jenkins’ account offers a bleaker, less heroic picture of service in the name of justice.

“Most of my work has been digging defensive position [sic]. Digging position,” he says in the video. “If the Russians come, you push back, you shoot for the drones. But I haven’t really done much of that.”

He recounts firing a machine gun once into a Russian position, but it’s unclear if he ever saw combat. “I don’t know what a win is. Is it to freeze the line and then let Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea choose again?”

He describes a battlefield stripped of meaning – bleak, grim, senseless. “I saw lots of bodies, dead bodies. Infrastructure had been destroyed, the environment, ecology had been destroyed. Mud, just a lot of mud. Not many trees. It’s not beautiful, it’s not nice.”

Jenkins also gives a candid account of dysfunction among the volunteer ranks. “There were other drugs with some of the foreigners. I tried in Ternopil, I tried marijuana, I had a puff,” he says. “But on the base near Slovyansk, there were people who were smoking marijuana, cannabis and drinking on base, and it was causing issues.”

What began as a personal mission – perhaps for justice, perhaps for meaning – seems to have curdled into a slow descent into disillusionment.

Jenkins, a talented cricketer and footballer, was known for his skills and dedication. After graduating in 2010 and studying biomedical sciences at Monash University, he moved to China in 2015, where he worked as a lecturer at Tianjin Modern Vocational Technology College from 2017. Jenkins was a passionate vegan and runner, often sharing his beliefs through social media, including a rather odd video stating he would “force Chinese people to be vegan”.

A schoolfriend recently described Jenkins as “quirky, but a really great guy”. But after school, he said, he’d lost contact with many of his friends. As a cricket teammate, he was “a bit smarter than average, more deep-thinking”.

But here Jenkins doesn’t speak in absolutes. He second-guesses himself constantly. What is clear, though, even in his hesitant answers, is that by the time he was captured, he wanted out.

Russia’s refusal to grant him POW status severely limits the options available to the Australian government. Quiet diplomatic overtures are being made, mainly through the International Committee of the Red Cross, and officials are believed to be exploring the possibility of a prisoner exchange.

Russian human rights groups have speculated that Jenkins may be part of a future swap involving Kira and Igor Korolev – Russian nationals arrested in Brisbane last year and charged with preparing to carry out an act of espionage.

For now, Jenkins remains a prisoner – not just of the Kremlin, but of the uncertainty that has defined his story from the beginning.

Don Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, points out that, unlike other high-profile Australian detainees in recent years – Kylie Moore-Gilbert in Iran, Cheng Lei in China, Sean Turnell in Myanmar – Jenkins is no academic, no journalist, no dissident. He is a man who inserted himself into a war, and because of Russia’s stance, may have forfeited the usual lines of diplomatic protection.

That doesn’t mean his life is worthless to the Kremlin. But it does mean that the path to bringing him home is narrower, more fraught, and more susceptible to politics. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has – as is its longstanding habit – urged his family to stay silent, wary of jeopardising sensitive talks.

In public, Jenkins is now reduced to a series of clips: a courtroom video, a coerced confession, a shaky YouTube monologue. But it’s in those moments – especially the unguarded ones – that his story comes through.

Not as a symbol. Not as a hero. Just a man who went looking for something, and found something else entirely.

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