A Conservative’s son has gone to Ukraine to join the battle against the Russian invasion after seeing a family being bombed inside their home.
Ben Grant, 30, who spent more than five years as a commando in the Royal Marines, said he had not told his mother Helen Grant, a former Government minister, that he was heading for Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters in Lviv, he said he had travelled there after seeing footage of a Russian attack on a house where a child could be heard screaming.
“I thought, I am a father of three, and if that was my kids, I know what I would do, I would go and fight,” he said. “Then I thought I would want another load of people who might be skilled enough to help me come and help me, come and help me, save my family.”
Mr Grant, who said he had been working as a security contractor in Iraq, is believed to be part of a seven-strong group of British ex-servicemen who arrived in Ukraine.
“I haven’t been sent, nothing to do with the Government, nothing to do with my mother. Just wanna make that clear, completely off my own back, I decided to do this. I didn’t even tell my mum, but it is what it is,” he told The Guardian, as he waited to get on a train to the capital Kyiv.
His mother is the Tory MP for Maidstone, Boris Johnson’s special envoy on girls’ education and a former sports minister. At the weekend, Britain’s defence chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin stressed: “We’ve been very clear that it’s unlawful as well as unhelpful for UK military and for the UK population to start going towards Ukraine.”
Thousands of foreign fighters, though, have headed to Ukraine to join the war against Russia.
One of those among Mr Grant’s group identified himself as Ash from London, and said he was there after seeing a video of a plane firing a missile at a home.
Meanwhile, four British soldiers believed to have gone Awol to fight Russian troops in Ukraine were warned by a Cabinet minister that doing so would be a “court martial offence”.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps stressed their actions risked a “dangerous situation” which the Kremlin could exploit if they were captured by pretending it was a British military intervention in the war in Ukraine. Mr Shapps told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:“There is no route in as the MoD have said, it would be a court martial offence.”
The Ministry of Defence stressed that service personnel are banned from travelling to Ukraine.
The statement followed reports that a 19-year-old Coldstream Guardsman is among the missing British soldiers feared to have travelled to Ukraine.
According to reports in The Sun, the teenage soldier, based in barracks in Windsor, wrote a goodbye letter to his parents and bought a ticket to Poland with the aim of crossing into Ukraine.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman added: “All service personnel are prohibited from travelling to Ukraine until further notice.
“Personnel travelling to Ukraine will face disciplinary and administrative consequences.”
