Anthony Albanese’s update on Oscar Jenkins before he stands trial, as new picture released
A new photo of Oscar Jenkins has been released amid reports the Australian is now facing criminal charges for being a mercenary. Anthony Albanese has promised Jenkins will not be abandoned.
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said his government has not abandoned Oscar Jenkins, amid reports the Australian is now facing criminal charges for being a mercenary.
“We’ll continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of Vladimir Putin on behalf of Mr Jenkins,” the Prime Minister said.
“We will stand up and use whatever avenues we have at our disposal to continue to make those representations.”
His comments came as a new picture of the Melbourne man was released by the Lugansk People’s Republic Prosecutor’s Office.
He said Australia’s “friends” in Ukraine had also made representations as well.
Jenkins will stand trial on mercenary charges in Russian-occupied Lugansk, the eastern region’s Moscow-installed authorities said Saturday AEST, the latest foreign soldier fighting for Ukraine to appear before the court.
“The Prosecutor’s Office of the Lugansk People’s Republic approved the indictment in the criminal case against 33-year-old citizen of the Commonwealth of Australia Oscar Charles Augustus Jenkins,” the authorities said in a statement.
According to the investigators, Jenkins came to Ukraine in February 2024 from Melbourne and then fought against the Russian army between March and December 2024, for which he was paid around $7,000-9,000 a month.
The Australian government have repeatedly called on Russia to release Jenkins, a former biology teacher.
After his capture in combat Jenkins first appeared in a video shared by a Russian military blogger in December 2024, in which he was filmed being roughly interrogated under duress and slapped in the face.
He was then believed to have been killed in captivity, until Russia confirmed he was alive and later posted a video of the frail Australian’s medical examination, with the captors heard joking in the background that his blood pressure showed “he wasn’t dead”.
“We’ve made it clear to Russia that Mr Jenkins is a prisoner of war and that there are obligations that kick in accordance with international humanitarian law and they must be observed,” Mr Albanese said after the examination video was released.
Russia and its eastern Ukraine proxies typically consider foreigners travelling to fight in Ukraine as “mercenaries”.
This enables them to prosecute fighters under its criminal code, rather than treating them as captured prisoners of war with protections and rights under the Geneva Convention.
Most recently British man James Scott Rhys Anderson, 22, was charged with terrorism after he was caught in the Kursk region fighting on Ukraine’s side.
— with AFP
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