The body of a British mercenary was found tied up in a body of water in Ukraine earlier this summer, the UK Foreign Office confirmed on Friday. It is unclear who killed the fighter, and Ukrainian authorities have said that an investigation will not be launched until next year.
Jordan Chadwick, who served in the British Army from 2011 to 2015, traveled to Ukraine last October to join the International Legion. Lancashire Police told his mother in June that he had been found dead in a body of water with his hands tied behind his back. The Foreign Office confirmed his death to multiple UK media outlets on Friday.
The 31-year-old’s body was repatriated to the UK last month. The Ukrainian military will open an inquest into his death in February, the BBC reported.
It is unclear where Chadwick died, or who killed him. Likewise it is unclear whether Chadwick was drowned to death, or was dead before he was thrown into the water.
Chadwick is one of more than a dozen British nationals killed in Ukraine since the conflict began last February. Those killed include 22-year-old Samuel Newey, who died in combat last month, and Simon Lingard, who was killed by artillery fire in the unsuccessful defense of Artyomovsk/Bakhmut last November.
Three days after Russian forces entered Ukraine last year, President Vladimir Zelensky put out an appeal for foreigners to join the country’s International Legion. Thousands answered, but stories of ill-prepared recruits, incompetent commanders, and horrific losses soon emerged. The legion shifted its recruitment efforts solely to military veterans shortly afterwards, but foreign fighters in Ukraine have consistently described conditions on the front line as “hell,” with casualty rates in some units reportedly as high as 85%.
Some 12,000 hired guns have traveled to Ukraine since the start of the conflict, the Russian Defense Ministry estimated in July. As of July, just 2,200 remained in the country, with 5,000 killed and the rest fleeing Ukraine, the ministry stated.
However, the commander of the Georgian Legion, another foreign mercenary group, claimed in June that the true number of foreign fighters in Ukraine is much higher. Nearly 20,000 foreigners were serving in Ukraine at that time, Mamuka Mamulashvili told British media, with almost 3,000 British citizens among them.