A former Conservative MP ousted within the 2024 election has reportedly joined the Worldwide Legion in Ukraine in a non-combat function to assist the combat towards Russia.
Jack Lopresti, who represented the Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency in South Gloucestershire from 2010 to 2024, is finishing up assist work for the unit, together with international relations and diplomacy duties, weapons procurement and work with veterans and charities, the Impartial reported.
Lopresti’s ex-wife, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, a former Conservative minister who defected to Reform UK after dropping her parliamentary seat in 2024, mentioned on X that she and her son had been unaware of his choice to affix the unit, including: “I want him a protected return.”
Lopresti, 55, a former deputy chair of the Conservative get together, instructed the Impartial: “I’m primarily based in Kyiv, however I always journey throughout Ukraine,” including that previously week he had been to the cities of Kharkiv and Poltava within the nation’s east.
“It’s a enormous honour and an immense privilege for me to serve within the Ukrainian navy and be capable of assist the gallant and superb Ukrainian folks in any manner I can,” he mentioned.
“They don’t seem to be solely preventing for his or her freedom and their proper to exist as a unbiased and sovereign nation – they’re additionally preventing for all of us, in Europe and the remainder of the free world.”
Lopresti served within the Territorial Military as a gunner with 266 Commando Battery, Royal Artillery from 2007, and later served as a mobilised reservist with 29 Commando RA for a yr and was deployed in Helmand province in Afghanistan.
Earlier than his parliamentary profession he labored for his father’s ice-cream enterprise for a decade.
Official recommendation from the International, Commonwealth and Improvement Workplace suggests it’s unlawful for British residents to combat in Ukraine.
It reads: “In case you journey to Ukraine to combat, or to help others engaged within the struggle, your actions might quantity to offences underneath UK laws. You might be prosecuted in your return to the UK.”
There aren’t any examples of any Britons being prosecuted within the UK for preventing in Ukraine. In October, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed a invoice permitting international volunteers preventing in Ukraine’s Worldwide Legion to function officers. Till then, volunteers may combat solely as privates or sergeants.
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