Oscar Jenkins, the Australian man reported as killed in captivity by Russian forces in the war in Ukraine, is alive, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong (黃英賢) has said.
Wong yesterday said the government has confirmed he is being held as a prisoner of war.
“The Australian Government has received confirmation from Russia that Oscar Jenkins is alive and in custody,” she said.
“We still hold serious concerns for Mr Jenkins as a prisoner of war,” she said.
“We have made clear to Russia in Canberra and in Moscow that Mr Jenkins is a prisoner of war and Russia is obligated to treat him in accordance with international humanitarian law, including humane treatment,” she said.
Wong said the Australian government was calling on Russia to release Jenkins.
“If Russia does not provide Mr Jenkins the protections he is entitled to under international humanitarian law, our response will be unequivocal,” she said.
She said she had spoken directly with the Ukrainian foreign minister and to the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC], “and am grateful for their ongoing advocacy for Mr Jenkins.”
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular support to Jenkins’s family.
There are few details on Jenkins’s captivity in Russian custody, where he is being held, or the conditions of his incarceration.
The Guardian understands the Russian ambassador had advised Jenkins is being held in the custody of the Russian Armed Forces, whose members had initially detained him. He is being held on Russian territory, and his health condition is reported as “normal”.
The Australian government is working with Ukraine and the ICRC to push for access to Jenkins to independently verify his welfare and conditions.
Jenkins, a 32-year-old former teacher, travelled to Ukraine and enlisted to fight with the Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko said the revelation that Jenkins was alive was good news for Australians.
“However, that the Russian Federation refused to confirm his status for more than a month — and thereby put his family, friends and fellow Australians through anguish — is typical of that barbarous regime,” he said.
Myroshnychenko said that Russia had been documented as maltreating and killing prisoners of war, “as well as constantly lying on an industrial scale,” and could not be taken at its word alone.
Russia should now “provide definitive video proof” that Jenkins was alive, he said.
“Then more importantly, it should release him rather than use him as a human bargaining chip for its authoritarian aims,” he said.
Jenkins, a 32-year-old former teacher, traveled to Ukraine and enlisted to fight with the Ukrainian military.
Last month, video circulated on pro-Kremlin social media accounts showing Jenkins in what appeared to be Russian captivity. He was dressed in military fatigues with his hands tied and dirt across his face. He is hit in the head by a person off-camera who asks him questions in Russian.
In response, he identified himself as 32-year-old Oscar Jenkins and, speaking in both English and Ukrainian, said he was a biology teacher who lived in Australia and Ukraine.
In the short video, Jenkins was asked why he was in Kramatorsk — in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — and if he was a mercenary, being paid to fight.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
RSS