The son of a Conservative MP and former government minister has arrived in Ukraine to fight in the war against Russia.
Ben Grant, 30, who used to serve in the Royal Marines, said that he hadn’t told his mother - MP for Maidstone Helen Grant - that he intends to join the fight against the Russian invasion.
Mr Grant is part of a group of seven ex-servicemen who arrived in Ukraine over the weekend.
His mother is the prime minister’s special envoy on girls’ education and the trade envoy to Nigeria.
“I haven’t been sent, nothing to do with the government, nothing to do with my mother,” he told The Guardian at Lviv railway station in Ukraine. “Just wanna make that clear, completely off my own back, I decided to do this,
“I didn’t even tell my mum, but it is what it is.”
He told reporters that he made the journey to Ukraine after seeing footage of a Russian bombing of a house where a child was screaming.
He said: “I thought, I am a father of three, and if that was my kids I know what I would do, I would go and fight.”
Mr Grant, who had been working as a security contractor in Iraq before he travelled to Ukraine, said that he knows of another 100 people coming to fight in the war.
He added that he would rather take his own life that be taken prisoner.
Another man, who gave his name only as Jax, said that he too had been working in private security in Iraq, earning £4,500 a month.
He added: “I’ll stay to the bitter end, even if I’ll take a bullet to the chest.”
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said that the “UK is not actively” encouraging volunteers to fight abroad, warning that “we have laws in our country about international conflicts and how they must be conducted.”
Despite the warning, a number of Brits have volunteered to fight against the Russian invasion.
The Ministry of Defence has said that service personnel are banned from travelling to Ukraine amid reports that British soldiers have gone absent without leave.
The comments follow reports that a 19-year-old Coldstream Guardsman has travelled to the country to fight the Russian invasion.
Around 20,000 people from 52 countries have so far signed up, according to Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Ms Grant has been contacted for comment.
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