LONDON: A group of British ex-servicemen — including the son of a Conservative lawmaker — have arrived in Ukraine bent on fighting Russians, despite UK government warnings against joining the war.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss appeared to give Britons license to join up when she said on February 27: “Absolutely, if that’s what they wanted to do.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and the head of the armed forces have all disowned Truss’s comment, and she reversed herself Wednesday.
Foreign Office advice warns against all travel to Ukraine, and Britons wanting to help should rather donate money to a national fundraising appeal, she told a news conference in Washington.
“What I said the other week was expressing support for the Ukrainian cause. They are fighting a just war, and we are doing all we can to support them,” Truss said.
But Ben Grant, 30, who served for five years as a Royal Marines commando, is among seven British former soldiers who arrived in Ukraine over the weekend, The Guardian reported.
His mother, Helen Grant, is a Conservative lawmaker and former minister who is Johnson’s special envoy on girls’ education.
Ben Grant, a father of three, said he had not informed his mother before going, following a stint working in Iraq as a private security contractor.
Speaking to The Guardian in Lviv railway station before boarding a train for Kyiv, he said he chose to go after viewing television footage of a bombed house in Ukraine where a child could be heard screaming.
“In total we have another 100 people coming, so this will be really good when they all get here — different backgrounds, some of them are very, very specialist,” Grant said.
He said he was undeterred by Russia’s warnings that “foreign mercenaries” taken captive by its forces in Ukraine would not be treated as prisoners of war.
“If it comes to me being able to end my life before getting captured, I probably would do that,” he said. “I mentally prepared myself for that, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
While Grant’s group are ex-servicemen, The Sun newspaper reported that a 19-year-old member of the Coldstream Guards was among up to four missing British soldiers believed to have gone to Ukraine.
Among its duties, the elite regiment provides protection for Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, west of London.
The Coldstreams are the oldest continuously serving regiment in the British Army, and fought against Russia in the 1853-56 Crimean War.
In parliament on Wednesday, Wallace said any serving personnel who have gone to Ukraine “will be breaking the law and they will be prosecuted when they return for going absent without leave or deserting.”
For other Britons, the defense secretary said: “We strongly discourage them from joining these forces.
“The Ukrainians are very clear: you turn up, you are in it for the whole game. You are not in it for a selfie and six weeks, you are in it for real,” added Wallace, who is a former Scots Guard officer.