A 22-year-old man, who served as a signalman in the British Army until 2023, has reportedly been captured in Russia’s Kursk Region while fighting alongside the Ukrainian International Legion, which consists of foreign recruits that Moscow considers mercenaries.
The Russian forces captured the individual, who identified himself as James Scott Rhys Anderson, near the village of Plekhovo, approximately 5 kilometers inside Russian territory, according to reports from RIA Novosti and TASS news agencies. Several videos of his interrogation have been published by Russian Telegram channels.
Anderson stated he served in the British Army as a signalman in the 1st Signal Brigade, 22 Signal Regiment, 252 Squadron from 2019 to 2023. After leaving the military, he allegedly faced financial difficulties and decided to join Kiev’s International Legion after seeing an advertisement on television.
“It was a stupid idea,” he said. “I had just lost everything – my job, and my dad was away in prison.”
He claimed he applied online to join the Ukrainian foreign mercenary force, then flew from London to Krakow, Poland, before taking a bus to Medyka on the Ukraine border. When asked how he ended up fighting on Russian soil, Anderson claimed in another video that his commanders sent him there against his will.
“I don’t want to be here,” he told the interrogators, insisting that his commanders took his “s**t”, including his passport and smartphone, and told him to “get into the car.”
The UK Ministry of Defence has declined to comment on the capture of the former serviceman, while the Foreign Office stated it is “supporting the family of a British man following reports of his detention,” according to The Guardian.
Earlier this month, a British man from Gunnislake, Cornwall, was killed while fighting for Kiev at an “undisclosed location” less than two months after turning 22, his family reported.
Kiev deployed some of its best-armed and most experienced troops across the northern border in August, hoping to slow down Russian advancement elsewhere on the front line and gain an important bargaining chip. However, since then, Kiev has not only been losing ground in Donbass at an increasing pace but has also suffered more than 34,500 casualties and lost hundreds of tanks in Kursk, according to the Russian military.
Kiev is struggling to replenish the troops lost in the conflict, as the flow of volunteer fighters has long dwindled, yet it has repeatedly rejected any compromise with Moscow. Russia says Ukrainians are being used as ‘cannon fodder’ in a Western proxy war and that the country’s leader Vladimir Zelensky is complicit in the slaughter, as he seeks to preserve his personal power.
Moscow has described the Ukrainian incursion as a significant turning point in the armed conflict, stating that no peace talks can occur until all of Kiev’s troops are pushed out of the Kursk Region.
Meanwhile, the UK remains committed to supporting Kiev “for as long as it takes” to prevail, British Defense Secretary John Healey said in a recent post on X. London has also followed the US lead in allowing Kiev to fire Western-supplied missiles deeper into Russian territory, marking another escalation in the conflict.