British volunteer killed in Ukraine hoped to settle there after war
A BRITISH military volunteer who took part in some of Ukraine’s fiercest battles has been killed while serving in the country’s east.
Jay Morais, 52, from Bristol, spent more than a year on Ukraine’s frontlines, including intensive street fighting in the Donbas cities of Severodonetsk and Bakhmut.
His death was confirmed on Tuesday night by Ukraine’s International Legion, the multinational fighting force set up by president Volodymyr Zelensky last year.
“Sadly, Jay Morais has died in the line of duty,” a spokesman said. He declined to provide further details, although it is understood that Mr Morais died in a Kharkiv hospital after being in combat with Russian troops further east in late February.
Last summer, Mr Morais spoke briefly to a Daily Telegraph reporter about fighting in Severodonetsk, which Russian troops eventually captured after four months of heavy fighting.
He said that several comrades had been killed or injured and that during one firefight, he had “run for my bloody life” down a street while being chased by a Russian tank. The combat, he said, was so intense that some other volunteers, including experienced soldiers, had left.
“Your adrenalin is just flying so high, you are either on it or s--- scared,” he said. “It is not about being brave, you are just wired differently, and you don’t really know how you are going to react.”
Asked about his life before coming to Ukraine, Mr Morais said that he had spent time in the French Foreign Legion, serving in Kosovo and the Ivory Coast. He left in 2007 and returned to the Bristol area to work as a sales manager for a mobile phone firm.
He had no wife or children, and had gone to Ukraine to stop Russia “doing what it likes”.
While serving in Ukraine, he began a relationship with a humanitarian volunteer, Lidiya Martynova, to whom he was engaged.
He was given a funeral in Ukraine with military honours, and his body was cremated. Half his ashes were laid by his fiancée at a Kyiv cemetery and the other half sent home to relatives in Britain.
Ms Martynova, 34, told The Daily Telegraph: “Jay was a very special guy, beautiful and crazy at the same time. He was a professional soldier, but he would always say that it wasn’t important how many enemies he’d killed, but how many people he’d saved. He was planning to stay in Ukraine once the war was over to start a new life here.”
Earlier this year, Mr Morais fought in Bakhmut and had been promoted to platoon leader. Het said the hardest part was having to speak to relatives of soldiers under his command who had been killed or injured.
Friends said they could detect the toll that combat had taken on him after he returned to Bristol on a break last year. Marcus Pinson, the owner of an army surplus store at which Mr Morais used to buy equipment, said: “He was telling stories of what had happened out there, and how some of his friends had been killed. At times he would sound quite upset. But he felt he had to go back for another tour of duty as he didn’t want to let his comrades down.”
Tony Hackett, a former work colleague of Mr Moraise, said: “He was a good guy, and when the war started, he just felt he had to help, given the training he’d had in the Foreign Legion.”