An Australian man currently serving a 13-year prison sentence in Russia after being captured while fighting for Ukraine has given his first interview since being convicted in what the Australian government has slammed as a "sham trial".
Appearing gaunt, with a shaved head and dressed in a prison uniform, in an interview filmed inside a prison in Russian-occupied Luhansk, Oscar Jenkins explained why he decided to join Ukrainian forces in early 2024.
"It felt like the right thing to do; if a country invades another country, why?" he said.
"And if there's not a good reason for that, like Taiwan, then that's something that I should stand up for.
"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."
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Extraordinarily, Jenkins also said he has told his captors he would fight for them too.
"I've written a statement saying that I'd be happy to fight as a soldier for Russia," he said.
"But if they don't trust me or for whatever reason don't want that, then I can understand."
The interview was conducted in the prison over two days by Mark Lowe, an Australian who has been living in Vladivostok for four years and works as an English teacher.
Mr Lowe, who also runs a website that reports sympathetically on Russia and the Putin regime, said he tried for a year to secure permission from authorities to interview Jenkins, which forms the basis of a documentary he plans to release.
"It's geared to a Western audience to enlighten them as to what really goes on in Ukraine," he told the ABC.
"To give them a different perspective."
Mr Lowe said that he used relationships he formed with government officials who had been his English language students to secure permission for the interview, but that Jenkins had no prior knowledge before he arrived.
"I turned up [to the prison] unannounced," he said.
"I said I'm here if you'd like to do an interview with me. He said, 'yeah'."
The ABC has been unable to independently verify the circumstances under which the interview was conducted.
However, Mr Lowe claims that no conditions were placed on the interview and also denied he had been pressured to conduct it by Russian authorities.
Asked why they trusted him, Mr Lowe said he believed they approved of the "objective" writing on his website.
Jenkins details his journey to Ukraine
During the interview, Jenkins described his journey to Ukraine, some of the "missions" he was involved with and how he was captured.
Jenkins — who did not have a military background — said that before he decided to fight with Ukrainian forces, he had considered fighting in Myanmar against the military junta and also joining the Israeli defence force.
"I was going to go to Israel. It just felt a little bit too hard for me because I wasn't Israeli or something. But now I think I could have done it," he said.
"I just thought if I was going to go to war, then Israel would be a good bet, but I chose Ukraine because it was easier, I think, just fly in and go there."
He told Mr Lowe that he had been working in China and watching videos on YouTube.
"The video was actually talking about journalism within the Donbas region, but I didn't think that, for whatever reason, I didn't think that journalism was for me.
"I thought, no, I'll just go and be a soldier. I want to help, so I'm just going to go be a soldier."
He said he bought a ticket from Australia to Poland, then took a bus to the Ukrainian border and approached officials there.
After signing up at a recruitment office, Jenkins said he underwent a month of "processing time".
"People didn't like what Russia was doing; they felt Russia was being a bully, and all that while I was prepping for my own position as a machine gunner," he said.
"I was told I was going to be a machine gunner on the front."
Jenkins said his group was trained by Ukrainian soldiers and American, French and British volunteers.
He said his "foreign" unit was an official part of the Ukrainian army, "but it felt very unofficial and separate".
"We had a British commanding officer; he was 24 years old, he'd had some experience fighting.
"But 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."
He said he went on about nine or 10 missions, including the one during which he was caught.
"Four of us got in the armoured vehicle to go to the position; I was dropped off not knowing that it was essentially Russia, it was a Russian position that I was in already," he said.
Jenkins described digging a trench but then losing touch with the rest of his unit.
"There was a whole bunch of drones, grenades going off from the moment we left that vehicle. There was a lot of chaos."
He said he suffered a broken arm and damage to one leg when a drone dropped a grenade.
After four days in the trench, he was approached by "a guy" who "asked me if I needed a hand".
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"And then we walked five metres forward, 10 metres forward into a blindage [camouflaged dugout] and there were three soldiers there.
"They asked me who I was; I said I was a Ukrainian soldier and then I got captured."
Sentenced to 13 years in alleged 'sham trial'
In May, Jenkins was tried in a court in Luhansk and sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment in a "maximum security penal colony" for participating as "a mercenary in an armed conflict".
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong described it as a "sham trial".
Ms Wong said that Jenkins was a prisoner of war, so must be given "the protections afforded to him".
Russia considers foreigners who have travelled to fight in Ukraine to be mercenaries who are prosecuted under criminal law and not as prisoners of war.
During the interview, Mr Lowe does not ask Jenkins what support he had received from the Australian government.
A Kremlin-aligned, Moscow-based human rights group has previously suggested Jenkins could be released as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and Australia.
It suggested the swap could involve the accused Russian spies Kira and Igor Korolev as well as pro-Putin propagandist Simeon Boikov, known online as the "Aussie Cossack", who is hiding from Australian authorities in the Russian consulate in Sydney.
