Inside the Minds of Brit Traitors: Why Some Are Fleeing to Fight for Putin in Russia's Illegal War

OVER a beer just miles from the frontline in Ukraine, Bradley Townsend told the two fellow Englishmen sitting beside him why he had left Barnsley behind.

The fisherman had not yet joined Vladimir Putin’s . For the moment, he was simply a new arrival sharing a drink with Ben Stimson and Aiden Minnis, two British traitors already serving .

But soon afterwards, directed to a recruitment centre by his new-found friends, Townsend signed a military contract and was sent to the front.

Within months, he was dead, becoming the first Briton known to have died fighting for Russia.

The 33-year-old ran off and joined Putin’s army in April, despite having no military experience. On June 10, he was killed by a drone near the city of Lyman in the Donetsk region of eastern .

Bradley had reportedly told his family he was travelling to when he left Britain, but instead made his way to Moscow, where he met Ben and Aiden.

On April 4, just days after arriving, he appeared alongside the pair in a video uploaded by a Russian organisation promoting international volunteers.

Consumed by the Russian propaganda machine, Bradley insisted he had made the decision alone and understood that joining Putin’s forces could mean never seeing Yorkshire again.

“I came with the idea that I probably wouldn’t be able to go home,” he said. “I’d definitely get persecuted if I went back.

“I’m not here for a suicide mission, but I understand that’s what can happen. This was my own decision. I wasn’t pushed into anything.”

Just ten weeks later, Bradley, who had been given the call sign “Badger”, was killed during what a pro-Russian account described as a “storm operation”.

Announcing his death, Aiden claimed his friend had “sacrificed his life for our cause”, adding: “His service was brief but he blazed the brightest star.”

The self-proclaimed “normal working-class lad” claimed to have joined Mad Vlad’s army to repay Russia for supporting the miners’ strike in the 1980s, but those who knew him do not think that was really the case.

Another traitor to Britain, Ben Stimson, tells The Sun: “I got the sense that he just needed a purpose in life.

“He told me how he used to be a drug addict and was battling to stay clean,” adds Stimson, who travelled to war-torn Donetsk to work with Putin’s forces.

“He knew the basic and had been following the conflict, but I am not sure that’s what really drew him to Ukraine.

“When we were sitting in my flat before he signed up, I heard him call his mum, who was not impressed, and that’s when I told him to go home.”

He says Bradley and Aiden were drinking heavily during the two weeks they spent together.

“I like a drink, but that’s not what I was there for,” says Ben.

Ben, 50, from Oldham, first travelled to Moscow in 2015 before illegally entering eastern Ukraine, where he joined pro-Russian militia forces in the Donbas region.

He was arrested when he returned to Britain and jailed for five years and four months in 2017 after admitting assisting others in committing acts of .

“When I got out of , I had nothing. There was no help, nowhere to live, and I was constantly being harassed by counter-terrorism ,” says Ben.

He says that is why he decided to return after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

After travelling back to Russia in February 2024, Stimson signed an army contract and worked in occupied Ukraine repairing generators.

He later became an instructor, training foreign recruits, many of them from Africa, in weapons handling, navigation and first aid.

He insists he was not a recruiter and did not serve on the frontline, but he was never far from the fighting.

“There was definitely a degree of self-interest in going back. The political motivation was still a factor, but I wanted a better life,” says Ben.

“And I have that now in Russia.”

He now lives in a one-bed flat in Moscow, works as an English tutor and has secured a Russian passport.

Ben is friends with Aiden Minnis, 37, a former drug addict and convicted thug from Chippenham, , who calls himself a “Z Patriot” and a “sapper in the Russian army”.

Aiden, who fled Britain to help Moscow’s war in 2022, claimed he initially worked as a sapper before joining a Russian motorised rifle regiment in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, storming Ukrainian trenches and positions.

He regularly shared images and posts about life near the frontline.

In October, he posted a photograph of himself standing at the entrance to a Russian bunker holding an AK-74M rifle, hailing it as “the best automatic ever invented” and claiming it was the preferred weapon of Russian “stormtroopers”.

Aiden’s family back in Britain disowned him after he joined Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine.

They claimed they wanted “nothing to do with him”.

The former National Front thug claims he helps “lay landmines and explosives” used to kill Ukrainian soldiers.

He believes he is “doing the Lord’s work” by joining Moscow’s forces and has said he is “willing to die” on the frontline.

Minnis said in one video: “I am starting a new life in Russia. I am now Russian. I am happy to be Russian.”

The exact number of Britons who have fought for Russia is unknown, but Stimsons insists it is higher than people think.

In 2024, then prime minister Rishi Sunak said “a small number” had volunteered to fight for Russia but did not put a figure on it.

“It is definitely more than ten and less than 20,” says Ben.

Any of the Britons who survive and try to return home could face investigation.

Foreign Office guidance warns that travelling to Ukraine to fight, or helping others involved in the war, may amount to a criminal offence under British law.

Former security minister Tom Tugendhat, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, described joining Russia’s army as “unbelievably stupid” and “extremely misguided”.

He said: “There’s no question about it, it’s criminal, because you’re engaging in an army that is committing the most barbarous war crimes that the world has seen in decades.”

On the opposing side around 3,000 Britons were reported to have applied to join Ukraine’s International Legion in the first weeks of Putin’s full-scale invasion, although it is not known how many eventually travelled or fought.

One of them is is Shaun Pinner, a former British Army soldier who joined the Ukrainian military in 2018.

He was captured during the siege of Mariupol in 2022 and sentenced to death in a sham trial by a Russian-backed court before being freed in a prisoner exchange.

Pinner says: “On both sides, the people who come out here tend to fall into three camps: the believers, the runaways and the killers.

“It is common to see people who are drug addicts, wanted or just on the run coming to Ukraine.

“They have little hope back home, and they come out here and Russia will use them in its propaganda and elevate their status.”

Decorated veterans have also hit out at the traitors who have joined Putin’s side.

Former British Army corporal Ben Sears said: “They are traitors to the UK. They shouldn’t be allowed back to Britain.

“What they are doing is sickening. They are helping an illegal invasion and should be treated as enemies of the state.”

Stimson responds with a brazen challenge to Britain: “If I am a traitor, they can take my citizenship. I don’t want it.

“I have the forms sitting on my table, but I am not paying the 500-quid fee.

“If I really am fighting against British interests, take it away, just like they did to Shamima Begum.”