source : the age
Australian Oscar Jenkins has described surviving four days alone in a trench inside Russian territory with an injured arm and leg, and detailed why he joined Ukraine’s military, in his first interview since being jailed for 13 years in a Russian prison.
The former teacher from Melbourne, captured in December 2024 while serving in Ukraine’s military, is seen wearing a green prison uniform and makes an extraordinary offer to now fight for Russia, in an interview first reported by the ABC.
The former cricket coach was found guilty of acting as “a mercenary in an armed conflict” by a court in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine in May.
Jenkins said in the interview that American, French and British volunteers had trained his “foreign” unit, alongside Ukrainian soldiers, under a commanding officer who was a 24-year-old Brit with some fighting experience.
He said he went on about 10 missions, including the one where he lost touch with the rest of his unit and fell into enemy hands.
“Things felt a little bit hodgepodge, not a lot of resources to work with, but enough to get to the front and just sort of get yourself in a hole and maybe just hold the line if possible,” Jenkins said.
“I had water, I had a backpack in position,” he said of being in the trench he had dug. “The weather sort of cleared up; the next night I worked up the courage to move a little bit forward. There’s a lot of snow in this area – and then I changed my mind. There’s nothing I can see here; it all feels very dangerous.
“There were drones – a drone dropped a grenade. Broken arm here, problem with the left leg, moved back into the same hole, waited another two days […] not much sleep, but there was food and water for me.”
Jenkins said a man approached to ask if he needed help before three Russian soldiers captured him. He was bound and filmed being subjected to harsh interrogation by Russian officials after his capture.
Jenkins, a former biology teacher in China, said his decision to travel to Ukraine was spurred by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
“It felt like the right thing to do if a country invades another country, why, and if there’s not a good reason for that – like Taiwan – then that’s something I should stand up for,” Jenkins said.
“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.”
During the interview, Jenkins – who did not have a military background – revealed he had appealed to Russian authorities to allow him to now enlist in the Russian military.
“I’ve written a statement saying I’d be happy to fight as a soldier for Russia. But if they don’t trust me for whatever reason or don’t want me then I can understand,” he said.
He said he had previously considered fighting in Myanmar against the military junta and also joining the Israeli Defence Forces, before settling on Ukraine because the country was easier to fly into.
He said he flew from Australia to Poland, then took a bus to the Ukrainian border and approached officials there with an offer to volunteer. He was told he would be a machine gunner at the front.
Australian Mark Lowe, who has lived in Russia for four years, conducted the interview inside the Russian maximum-security prison over two days, according to the ABC.
Lowe told the ABC he had made attempts to interview Jenkins for over a year and used relationships he had with government officials to secure the interview for an upcoming documentary.
The ABC said it was unable to independently verify the circumstances under which the interview was conducted, nor Lowe’s claims that there were no conditions or pressure from Russian authorities.
However, it acknowledged that Lowe runs a website that reports sympathetically on Russia and the Putin regime.
In a statement, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said the Australian government was “appalled” by the “sham trial” and sentence imposed on Jenkins.
