- A widely-circulated video shows an English-speaking member of Azov battalion. He's now been identified as Leon Swampy from London
- His Internet writings show that he enjoys writing about...his beard?
This article originally appeared at The Dailly Lede Blog
An English speaking mercenary seen in a video following the assault on Mariupol early Saturday has been identified through social media as British-born Leon Swampy.
Swampy can be seen toward the end of the following video guiding a video journalist through a schoolyard which had been struck by Grad rocket fire early Saturday in Mariupol.
Swampy was identified through his profile on the popular Ukrainian social media site vKontakte which lists 3 ‘noteworthy’ pages, one of which belonging to the Azov Battalion: “Azov” Special Purpose Regiment.
Swampy also had an Instagram page which appears to have been taken down, but we’ve managed to secure a couple of shots from his account for readers reference. One photo in particular shows Swampy in fatigues and is tagged with an ominous message reading “Calm before the storm”.
Some very unflattering messages have since been posted to Swampy’s vKontakte wall following his appearance on the video.
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