Exclusive Photos from Before His Death: A Friend of War Reveals Why a Young Japanese Volunteer in the Russian Army Died in the Battlefield

He rode alone to Russia around October of last year. He researched the war zone on his own and brought an English document without an appointment, volunteering to join the Pyatnashka Brigade, a group of foreign volunteer soldiers. In his own way, he seemed to have researched history, including the Maidan Revolution, which was the cause of the Russian military invasion, and said, ‘People say Ukraine is justified, but I think Russia has the right to be justified.

On July 23, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi announced that a Japanese volunteer soldier had been killed in the fighting between Russia and Ukraine two and a half years after the invasion began. The man who died in Donetsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine, was a 29-year-old former Self Defense Force officer. Why did he join the Russian military and how did he meet his end?

Daisaku Kaneko, who participated in combat as a sniper in the Russian Defense Ministry’s special forces, opened up about the mysterious death of his comrade-in-arms.

He lived alone in Osaka City and spent four years at a Self-Defense Forces garrison in Shindayama (Izumi City). I heard that his rank was sergeant. He said he was a former Self Defense Force officer and his father was a public servant of the Osaka Prefectural Government, so if anything had happened to him, it could have become an international problem. I advised him, ‘When you return to Japan, you should say that you were a military reporter instead of saying that you took part in the battle,’ but he didn’t seem to mind.

A Japanese volunteer soldier who joined the Pyatnashka Brigade was assigned to an assault unit. He said that he liked the style of the assault soldiers, who would carry guns and rush into enemy territory on foot, but he was not able to participate in the fighting.

He said, “It seems that the commander decided that he was not ready for actual combat yet. As far as I know, he had never been in action until February of this year, when the city of Audy Iuka in the eastern Donetsk Oblast, which was the front line of Ukraine’s defense, fell. He was very troubled by the reality that he was not being relied upon in the field.

In April, about two months after the fall, the man was found at the military registration office in Tambov in southwestern Russia. There, he joined a new unit and was ordered to participate in an operation that would mobilize about 100 soldiers. However–.

A former member of the Pyatnashka Brigade, who had gone out with him, informed us that he had been killed by Ukrainian mortar fire during the assault on eastern Ukraine that took place from midnight on May 28 to the early morning of May 29. It was his first or second day in the field. When mortars were fired by the enemy, we were told to ‘look out’ or ‘get down,’ but he was not fluent in Russian, so he may not have been able to avoid it.

Meanwhile, the Russian government took an unusual approach to the Japanese volunteer soldiers who died.

When a militia member dies, he is usually buried in the battlefield and that is the end of it. However, in this case, with the interstate pipeline cut off, they took steps to have the body transported to Moscow, and after the father’s confirmation, the body was transported back to Japan. Russian law does not allow the body to be transported to Japan. …… Moreover, the Russians have promised to pay condolence money to the remaining family members.”

Another precious life of a young man has been lost in the doldrums of a war with no end in sight.

From the August 16, 2024 issue of FRIDAY