“Vesti Nedeli”, telling about the perfidy of the West, which allegedly for many years armed Ukraine to attack the peaceful Donbass and sent its mercenaries there, included in its story a fragment of an interview that BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg took from the minister during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov:

- I want to ask about the British, who were recently sentenced to death. In the eyes of the West, Russia is responsible for the fate of these people. Don't you think this death sentence...

“The eyes of the West don't interest me at all. I am only interested in international law, according to which mercenaries are not combatants. So what's in your eyes doesn't matter.

In fact, the definition of a mercenary is given in Article 47 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of June 8, 1977:

"one. A mercenary is not entitled to prisoner of war status.

2. A mercenary is any person who:

a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

b) actually takes a direct part in hostilities;

(c) takes part in hostilities motivated primarily by a desire for personal gain, and who is in fact promised by or on behalf of a party to the conflict material remuneration substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of the same rank and function in the personnel of the armed forces of that party;

d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a permanent resident in territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and

(f) not sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict to perform official duties as a member of its armed forces.”

For someone to be recognized as a mercenary, all six conditions must be met. But the British Sean Pinner and Aiden Aslin, as well as the Moroccan Saadun Brahim, who was captured with them, are military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who signed contracts even before the start of the war. According to the BBC, they have been living in Ukraine for several years, and Brahim received Ukrainian citizenship in 2020. That is, they do not meet the condition of paragraph "e" of the article of the additional protocol.

"Vesti Nedeli" cut off a fragment of the interview after the undiplomatic response of the head of Russian diplomacy and did not include in the plot the continuation of the conversation, which the BBC reports as follows:

“They are not mercenaries. They served in the Ukrainian armed forces,” Rosenberg retorted.

“The court should determine this,” Lavrov said. When asked if he considers the court in the DPR independent, he replied: “I am convinced that there is an independent court. Do you think you [in the UK] have an independent judiciary?”

True, by this time the “court” of the DPR, a quasi-state formation that only Russia recognizes among all UN members, had already made its decision and ignored the fact that the British served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And it would be strange to expect compliance with the Geneva Conventions from a self-proclaimed republic that did not sign them.

The official representative of the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, apparently took Lavrov's statement as a guide to action; in another story in the same issue of Vesti Nedeli, he says :

“Our databases include not only mercenaries directly involved in hostilities as part of Ukrainian units. We also take into account the instructors who arrived to train, assist in the operation and repair of Western weapons supplied to Ukraine.”

That is, Russian officials, contrary to the article of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, declare as mercenaries those foreigners who serve under a contract in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and at the same time instructors who do not take part in hostilities. Of course, the propagandists from Vesti Nedeli are not far behind either:

“Those who were captured are awaiting trial. Moreover, they do not have to count on the status of prisoners of war. For the justice of any country, they are simply murderers. Just two such bandits - US citizens - were caught near Kharkov this week.

At the same time, Vesti Nedeli, not noticing any contradiction, cites the story of one of the “bandits”:

“We were in the Baguette task force. It was part of the Ukrainian army, a reconnaissance unit. And our task was to park the trucks, walk around, do drone reconnaissance, check the surrounding area.”

They do not fundamentally see the difference between a contract soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a mercenary.