© Ayman OghannaJake Priday, a British citizen, volunteered for Ukraine Armed Forces
On February 26th Volodymyr Zelenksy, Ukraine's president, went on television and asked foreign volunteers to take up arms in his country's defence. Jake Priday, a 25-year-old British teacher from Cardiff in Wales, responded to the call. Priday had spent six years in the British army, doing tours of duty with the Royal Engineers in Estonia, Kenya and, most recently, Iraqi Kurdistan, where he helped train local militias in 2017. After he dislocated his knee the following year, he left the armed forces. Back home, he began teaching skills he'd learned as a soldier - making tourniquets and treating wounds - at a vocational school in Cardiff. Most of his students were young men in their late teens, who "had dropped out of university and were looking for some way to improve their lives".
Priday is 6'3" and powerfully built with green eyes and a crew-cut. Zelensky's plea caught his attention: here was a chance to instruct people who now needed his first-aid skills more than ever. He had been following the Russian troop manoeuvres on the Ukrainian border for months. "Whenever you see me on my phone, I'm not on social media," he said. "I'm scrolling through the news. My partner hates it. I'm always asking her, 'Have you seen this? Have you seen this?'" Priday didn't think that Putin's build-up of troops was a bluff. "It didn't make sense if it was all a ploy," he said. "It's too expensive to keep that much equipment there for so long." So when Russia finally invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Priday was already mentally prepared for his next move.
Comment: Footage circulating on Twitter claims to show a Ukrainian soldier filming himself and then showing who he claims is the murdered journalist's body lying on the ground. The Tweeter rightly asks: if Renaud was shot by Russian gunfire that happened just 10 minutes before, isn't it strange that the Ukrainian soldier seems to be so at ease in the film he's shooting? Is that because the territory is still completely under Ukrainian control and therefore the gunfire was unlikely to be from Russian forces?
This explanation has the advantage of being plausible: Renaud was mistaken for a spy, as he was taking pictures of troops and their location:
See also: Zelensky is Not in Charge of Ukraine, Nazis Are - And They Believe They Are on a Mission From God to 'Derussify Ukraine in Holy War'
And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Russian Operations in Ukraine Proceeding as Planned, But Risk of War Contagion Grows