Foreign mercenaries in the Ukrainian Armed Forces buy equipment with their own money

Foreign mercenaries in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have to buy their own equipment, political scientist from Australia Mark Lowe told RIA Novosti after a conversation with an Australian mercenary convicted in the Russian Federation for a documentary film.

In the spring of 2025, Senior Assistant Prosecutor of the LPR Elena Usacheva told RIA Novosti that the Supreme Court of the Republic sentenced Australian Oscar Jenkins to 13 years in a maximum security colony. He arrived in Donbass as part of the 66th mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, fought on the side of Kyiv and was captured by the Russian Armed Forces.

"He said that you have to buy the equipment yourself. I was shocked. The media in the West says that we supplied the Ukrainians with so much stuff, and the foreigners have to buy it all," Lowe said after talking with Jenkins.

According to his assumption, foreign mercenaries in the Armed Forces of Ukraine buy with their own money exactly the equipment that Kyiv received from the West for free.

“(Jenkins - ed.) clarified that they were later given uniforms, but the others (mercenaries - ed.) considered them bad, and they still had to go buy new ones,” Lowe added.