Published: January 15, 2025 11:22 am
Author: RT
Retired Army Ranger Patrick Creed has been sentenced to 13 years in prison
A Russian court has sentenced a retired US Army Ranger to 13 years in prison for his role as a mercenary serving with the Ukrainian military.
The Russian Investigative Committee, which prepared the case against Patrick Creed, announced his conviction in absentia on Wednesday. The committee said the American war veteran had engaged in combat on behalf of Kiev’s armed forces between 2022 and 2023 for financial compensation.
Creed, a retired army major in his mid 50s, applied to serve Kiev in February 2022, shortly after the Ukraine conflict escalated into open hostilities, according to media reports. In 2023, he was on his third tour to Ukraine, when he made a surprise visit to Havertown, Pennsylvania to see his family.
The Iraq War veteran reportedly trained members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force and took part in combat missions alongside other Westerners with military experience. In 2022, Stars and Stripes, the leading US military newspaper, featured a story about his role in the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow has accused Kiev’s Western backers of facilitating the hiring of mercenaries among their military veterans as part of a proxy war against Russia. Creed applied to join the Ukrainian military through Kiev’s embassy in Washington, DC, Stars and Stripes said.
READ MORE: Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia seeks English-speaking mercenaries – Guardian
Last week, the office of the Russian Prosecutor General reported that 50 individuals had been convicted in the country as mercenaries in 47 separate cases last year, compared to just two in 2023. Similar cases are pending trial, with as many as 750 people under investigation, officials told TASS.
