The good, the fat and the ugly who want to fight in Ukraine

Pro-Russian supporters walk past the Polish Consulate in Sydney. Picture: Jeremy Piper

If our local news is anything to go by, Russia is about to get a little bit fatter. Following the release of video where Oscar Jenkins, a 32-year-old teacher from Melbourne is menaced by a Russian soldier after his capture in the Donbas ­region of eastern Ukraine, Australia’s favourite serial pest and Putin propagandist, Simeon Boikov, inched his considerable frame into the picture and called for a prison swap.

The internet refers to Boikov as “an influencer”. It is partly true. Boikov has the happy knack of insinuating himself into matters well beyond his pay grade. The best description I can think of for the self-declared Aussie Cossack is Vladimir Putin’s man in Australia – if Putin knew who he was.

“Thank you to the Russian military. Glory to the Russian military,” Boikov said in yet another one of his interminable social media videos.

“They’ve taken Oscar Jenkins, an Australian mercenary, prisoner. Now we have an Australian prisoner, finally.”

Boikov urged his Russian confreres on the battlefield not to kill Jenkins and proposed the prison swap where Boikov could take his Russian military cosplay schtick back to the motherland.

The only official statement from Russia to date came from Viktor Petrovich Vodolatsky, a politician of little consequence who is also given to sporting Russia’s more lurid military uniforms where available photos show him looking like a dandier version of Hermann Goering.

The notion of a prison swap between a forlorn Australian vegan incongruously fighting on the battlefields of the Donbas and a grossly obese, sweaty man holed up in an apartment in Woollahra, claiming diplomatic protection, necessarily invites a raft of fat jokes.

Simeon Boikov outside Downing Centre Local Court, Sydney.

Russia is a big country but if Boikov landed awkwardly, he could still tip it over. Boikov’s blood type is borscht. If Boikov had to haul arse out of a combat zone, he’d have to make two trips. When Boikov walks backwards, he’s legally required to make a beeping sound. Boikov is so fat, he’s got his own oblast.

All right, I’m all out of fat jokes, but Boikov’s proposal should and will be ignored. It’s not a prisoner swap. Boikov is not a prisoner of war. He’s a petty crook, a convict and, worse, a criminal who will happily commit a crime while being unprepared to do the time.

Boikov was sentenced to 10 months in prison for breaching a suppression order and naming an alleged sex offender at an anti-lockdown rally in May 2022. By November that year, he had been released on parole. The following month Boikov assaulted a septuagenarian Ukrainian-Australian in the Sydney CBD, occasioning ­actual bodily harm.

The charge meant a breach of the terms of his parole and would have led to him serving the remainder of his sentence on the contempt matter. In Boikov’s own words, he fled to avoid having his collar felt. “I was driving on the Anzac Bridge, I rang (police), they connected me to the inspector he said ‘Come in, hand yourself in, you’re going back inside, parole wants ya’. I said ‘Yeah, nah’. I gunned it to the consulate hoping I wouldn’t get picked up.”

That was in December 2022 and he’s been holed up in the Russian consulate ever since.

While still wandering the streets, Boikov declared that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, where civilians were bombed and killed by air and missile strikes, would be over in weeks.

Holed up in the Russian Consulate by the time the Wagner group staged an uprising against the Putin regime in June last year, rolling tanks and personnel perilously close to the Kremlin, Boikov assumed the role of Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army with increasingly shrill messages to his followers on Telegram of the “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” variety.

While the idea of Boikov never darkening Australia’s door again has considerable appeal, the short official reply to his suggestion should be to leave the Russian consulate, hand himself in to police, do his time and after that, he would be free to travel to the Donbas and become a waddling HIMARS target.

Oscar Jenkins

Jenkins is the first Australian to be captured, while at least eight other Australians have been killed fighting for Ukraine. He may be guilty of recklessness, putting himself deliberately in harm’s way, but Jenkins was engaged in a just war. It should be noted, too, that while Ukraine encourages fighters from around the world to join them in the fight, the Russians have sought and compelled North Korean troops to fight in the quagmire of eastern Ukraine.

According to the Moscow Times, North Korean soldiers have suffered more than 1100 casualties since they entered the war at the request of Putin several months ago.

Anecdotally, stories abound of North Korean soldiers in eastern Ukraine being given access to smartphones, something denied them back at home east of the Yalu River. Gorging on Western cultural decadence, they have made themselves veritable porch lights for Ukrainian artillery and drone attacks.

Meanwhile, the Russians report 1500 of their men every day have become casualties during the spring offensive. It’s not been a happy time for Putin. A month ago, pro-democracy demonstrations in Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin and his perverted mass murdering accomplice, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, threatened the ruling cronies’ iron grip on the country.

Two weeks ago brought the swift departure of Bashar al Assad from Syria, who with his appalling wife, Asma, were accepted into exile in Moscow.

Where to put all those shoes and handbags? That’s the least of Assad’s problems. Offering no strategic importance and with nothing to trade except the vast amounts of cash he stole from Syria, it would be wise for Assad not to position himself in places where he might provide further work for Russia’s already busy ­glaziers.

In Boikov’s case, they’re going to need a bigger window.