Australian Oscar Jenkins jailed for 13 years in Russia after being captured in Ukraine
An Australian man captured by Russian forces while fighting for Ukraine has been jailed for 13 years on the charge of being a 'mercenary', Russia-installed prosecutors said Friday.
Oscar Jenkins, a 33-year-old man from Melbourne, was convicted of being a 'mercenary in an armed conflict' and sentenced to 13 years 'in a strict regime penal colony' by a Russian-controlled court in Ukraine's east Lugansk region.
Russia and its eastern Ukrainian proxies consider foreigners travelling to fight in Ukraine as 'mercenaries'.
This enables them to prosecute them under its criminal code, rather than treating them as captured prisoners of war with protections and rights under the Geneva Convention.
The Australian government had repeatedly called on Russia to release Jenkins, a former biology teacher.
Russia-installed prosecutors said Jenkins 'took part in combat operations against Russian military personnel between March and December 2024'.
They posted a video showing Jenkins standing in a courtroom behind a glass cage, his hands behind his back and his expression despondent.
Russian forces captured Jenkins in December 2024.
In that same month, he appeared in a video shared by a Russian military blogger showing him being roughly interrogated and slapped in the face.
He was then believed to have been killed in captivity, until Russia confirmed he was alive.
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