Ravi Singh, from Chandigarh in the Punjab, is sometimes mistaken for a Brazilian volunteer. He had gone to university in New Zealand and he was working as a restaurant manager in Christchurch when he decided to travel to Donbass.
Mr Singh, 24, was a supporter of one of India’s many communist parties. “I thought Russia had become a fascist state after the fall of communism. Now I know that is not the case. I started following what was going on in Ukraine, terrible things like the fire in Odessa [when 46 pro-Russian demonstrators were burnt to death] and thought I must do something,” he said.
At 6ft 5in, Mr Singh was snapped up by the People’s Republic army for its elite Khan Battalion. “I haven’t found it physically difficult. I am quite fit, I played cricket.”
Although he supports separatism in Ukraine, he does not do so in India. “I followed the movement for Khalistan [an independent Sikh state] once, but then I realised it was being organised by the CIA,” he said. “This is different, the Ukrainians are cowards, they fire over our heads at civilians. I will stay here until we get victory. Then I want to go to Syria, if that war is still going on, and fight for the Kurds.”
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