The British founder of a bomb disposal charity is believed to have been killed in Ukraine after a Russian court sentenced him to 14 years in jail.
Chris Garrett was among three people said to have been critically injured in an incident near Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast on Tuesday.
He was reportedly wounded while trying to clear minefields, according to The Sun.
Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier and Ukraine war prisoner, said today that Mr Garrett and another individual, who was not named, had ‘sadly passed away’.
‘I can confirm that Chris was among those who died,’ he wrote on X today. ‘Our thoughts and prayers are with the families affected.’
Mr Garrett was a British volunteer from the Isle of Man, working in Ukraine to clear landmines from the war-torn country.
He was the founder of Prevail, a charity providing training to others in how to safely remove undetonated explosives.
Nearly a third of Ukraine is estimated to have been ‘contaminated’ by explosive ordnance.
Charities warn that landmines pose an ‘ever-present danger’ to civilian communities, with ‘children particularly at risk’.
Mr Chris Garrett was said to have died after being injured while clearing mines in Ukraine
Earlier this year, Mr Garrett was sentenced to 14 and a half years in jail by a Russian proxy court.
He was convicted of terrorism charges in his absence by a court under Russian control, while using his skills as a bomb disposal expert to defuse and remove materiel left behind by Russian troops.
‘The charges are ridiculous,’ he said at the time, as reported by ITV.
‘I mean, charged for terrorism by volunteering, or at times, being under contract by the Ukrainian armed forces.’
Mr Garrett was working in Ukraine to clear landmines years before the full Russian invasion in February 2022.
In 2016, two years after the illegal annexation of Crimea, Mr Garrett said that he was clearing landmines with a volunteer battalion as part of the Ukrainian National Guard.
Shaun Pinner, who wrote of Mr Garrett’s tragic passing on X, was a prisoner of war in Ukraine, captured by Russian forces in 2022.
Mr Pinner signed up to be a contracted soldier in Ukraine’s military in 2018, rising through the ranks after serving with the British Army for nine years.
He was captured by Russian forces during the siege of Mariupol in April 2022.
Mr Pinner said he was brutally beaten, electrocuted and starved by his captors over five months in captivity – treatment he said infringed his human rights and entitled him to compensation.
A Kyiv court ruled last April that he had been inhumanely treated and that the Russian Federation must compensate him accordingly.
MailOnline approached the Foreign Office for comment.
