Exclusive Photos Reveal Why Japanese Youth Who Joined Russian Military as Volunteers Perished on the Battlefield
Eight months after making his decision to travel to Japan, a former Japanese Self-Defense Force officer in his twenties volunteered to be an assault rifleman and became the target of a mortar attack.
“He arrived in Russia alone around October last year. He researched the battlefield himself and came with an unsolicited English document applying to join the Pyatnashka Brigade, which gathers foreign volunteers. He seemed to have studied history, including the Maidan Revolution, which was a cause of Russia’s military invasion, and said, ‘Although it’s said that Ukraine is just, I believe Russia has a point.'”
On July 23, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi announced that a Japanese volunteer soldier had been killed in combat during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has lasted for two and a half years since the invasion began. The deceased was a 29-year-old former Self-Defense Force member who died in Donetsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine. Why did he join the Russian military, and what was his final fate?
Daisaku Kaneko, who fought as a sniper in the Russian Ministry of Defense’s special forces, spoke about the mysterious death of his comrade.
“He was living alone in Osaka City and had been stationed at the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force base in Shinodayama (Izumi City) for four years. I heard he held the rank of sergeant. He was a former Self-Defense Force member, and his father is a public servant in Osaka Prefecture, so there was potential for an international issue if anything happened. I advised him, ‘When you return, it would be better to say you were a war correspondent rather than mentioning participation in combat,’ but he did not seem to be concerned.”
