Mercenary sentenced in Moscow may be Albanian-Belgian, image analysis shows

Moscow claims to have sentenced a 25-year-old Belgian to six years in a penal colony for fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine. The man may be a Belgian with Albanian roots who narrowly escaped a Russian attack on a training centre in 2022, according to an image analysis by Belga.

The man convicted by Russia is said to have joined the Ukrainian army's international legion two years ago to fight against Russian forces. An image analysis shows that he appears in a report by Voice of America about a Russian attack on a training centre for foreign recruits in Javoriv, Ukraine, on 23 March 2022.

In the report, the man describes a Russian attack on the centre in which 35 people were killed. He says that he had arrived at the training centre just two days earlier and ​ was planning to return home because he was not ready for war. The report was picked up by Albanian media at the time, which wrote that the man was born in Albania but lived in Belgium.

Sentenced in absentia

According to the Russian prosecutor's office, the Belgian man convicted on Thursday trained at the centre in question before allegedly taking up arms and taking part in "hostilities against representatives of the security forces of the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk People's Republics (LPR), as well as servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation". 

The man was sentenced in absentia to six years in a Russian penal colony. It is not clear if he is still in Ukraine. The Belgian Foreign ministry said it could not confirm the man's identity or nationality.

The presumed Albanian-Belgian also appears in an article in the British newspaper The Daily Mirror, which reported that the training centre had been infiltrated by Russian spies. This may explain why he appears in a Russian criminal file.

^{© PHOTO SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP}