This article was originally published in The Australian. A PDF version can be found here for those without paywall access.
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A few days before Christmas, a journalist friend messaged me to ask whether I knew Oscar Jenkins, having seen we were mutual connections on LinkedIn.
I confirmed I did and that we were classmates at primary and secondary school in 2003-10, although I hadn’t seen him in years.
I was gently informed Oscar had been captured by Russian soldiers while fighting for Ukrainian forces, and a video of him being interrogated was spreading online.
I confirmed his identity in the video and spent the afternoon in a state of disbelief. It was surreal and traumatic to see my old friend in the hostage video, his familiar face looking back at me from my mobile phone screen. Exposure to this sort of content is an increasingly common aspect of modern conflict due to the rise of digital technologies and social media, giving disturbing new meaning to Susan Sontag’s essay Regarding the Pain of Others.
Despite our culture’s growing desensitisation to and normalisation of such content, it was nauseating to see someone I had grown up with in that situation. It personalised the horrors of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict in a profound way. I felt sick seeing the fear in his expression and hearing his voice quiver, his confusion at being yelled at in a foreign language and violently struck by his captors, and his horror at the vulnerability of his position as a prisoner of war with his hands painfully bound by duct tape, his fate uncertain.
Perhaps even more unsettling were the online reactions and comments to the video and news stories as I searched for information. Telegram, Reddit, and X are largely unmoderated sewers of racism, negativity, anonymity and harmful content, especially as it relates to modern conflict and warfare. Yet the hateful and sadistic views expressed even extended to mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.
Users, some Australian, gloated at Oscar’s situation and celebrated Russia’s military actions and illegal invasion of Ukraine. It made me deeply uncomfortable to think there were people among us who so readily delighted in the suffering of others, especially the suffering of those who had sacrificed their liberty to join a just war in support of Ukraine.
As I watched the video and read the toxic online commentary, I remembered Oscar as the gentle 11-year-old I sat next to in class after moving to Melbourne.
I thought of the talented Latin and science student with a dry sense of humour. The loyal, kind and big-hearted friend to so many.
He was a great athlete, and I vividly recall our dramatic contest in the annual cross-country race around Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens where he pipped me for third place in the last few hundred metres.
We hadn’t seen much of each other since finishing high school in 2010. As is the way with our modern social networks and digital selves, I’d kept up with his adventures on Facebook over the years: teaching in China; cycling north through Australia and then across Asia; and his animal rights advocacy. We last messaged earlier this year about plant-based diets, with him encouraging me to go vegetarian again.
Just as the story broke in the media early last Monday morning, I was attending Christmas carols with some friends in a warm church near Oxford’s city centre. I shed a tear as we began to sing The First Noel and other familiar songs. It pained me to think where he might be at that very moment: terrified, cold, hungry, and alone in the wintry darkness of a foreign land, in the hands of brutal forces, in a conflict in which Australia is not directly engaged.
After the service, we prayed for Oscar and lit candles as symbols of hope.
The war in Ukraine has loomed large during my time in Britain. I have been fortunate to study alongside three brilliant young Ukrainians, who will assume responsibility for rebuilding their country when the war is over. They have each lost friends and extended family in the war, and the daily updates from home weighed heavily on them throughout the course.
I am also serving part-time as a rifleman in the British Army on exchange from the Australian Army Reserve. A Ukrainian-British member of my unit, Viktor Yatsunyk, was killed in September 2022 after he stepped on a landmine while rescuing injured soldiers near Izyum. He had left his family and life in the UK to join the war effort, never to return. In the soldier’s mess, there is a framed £20 note Viktor left behind to buy a round for his colleagues, superimposed over a Ukrainian flag. The text below the note reads in Ukrainian: “Drink to me, guys, I’m going to deal with these bloody Russians.”
In the days since news of Oscar’s capture broke, many have openly wondered why an Australian would seek to join an intense foreign conflict in what the historian Timothy Snyder called the eastern European “bloodlands”.
Scores of young Australians have done so since the outbreak of the conflict, with seven dying in combat to date. Wars can feel faraway and even abstract in Australia, secure as we are in our peaceful corner of the planet and in our society largely free of the ancient hatreds of Europe and the Middle East.
When interrogated by Russian soldiers as to why he was in the Donbas region, Oscar candidly answered that he was there “to help Ukraine”. That’s the measure of the man. For now, all we can do is hope and pray that Oscar will be treated humanely and in accordance with international law, and that our diligent and effective diplomatic staff will be able to arrange his safe return to Australia.
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Nick Fabbri is a policy analyst, writer, podcaster and reservist soldier based in Britain.