I was sickened by Russian war crimes, says British fighter

A BRITON who spent three years volunteering and fighting for Ukraine says he saw Russian forces commit “tons” of war crimes.

- By James Knuckey Pictures by Adam Gerrard

Leon Cribb is among a few UK nationals known to have entered Russia’s Kursk region amid Ukraine’s incursion last summer.

The 33-year-old, one of the first British volunteers to speak to the media after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, has revealed the harrowing impact of the war.

Mr Cribb said he was left “sickened” as he recalled witnessing Vladimir Putin’s forces using a banned weapon in attacks on civilians in the city of Avdiivka.

He said: “We would regularly go out at night to observe and take in the scenery and [saw] phosphorus bombs being dropped over the settlement, knowing there were civilians asleep at that time.

“Russian air force or Russian artillery teams firing phosphorus bombs into the clouds and then dropping down on to buildings, knowing that wherever they land they are going to cause a fire.”

Mr Cribb, from Chichester, West Sussex, added: “They [the Russians] don’t give a s***. They have no care.

“They think they're going to be conquered by NATO or the West. It’s just a decrepit, rotten ideology that Putin wants to proceed with and the Russians have inherited it.”

It is against international law to use white phosphorus which can cause severe burns as a weapon against civilians. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this year accused Russia of more than 183,000 war crimes.