A British man who fought in Ukraine and brought back a cache of grenades and ammunition received a suspended sentence on Friday, as reported by Richmondshire Today.
Stewart Wright, 45 from North Yorkshire, England, volunteered to fight in the war in Ukraine and reached the front lines, Teesside Crown Court heard.
After a period of traveling back and forth to Ukraine between 2020 and 2023, he returned home permanently albeit with four “high explosive” hand grenades and “multiple” live rifle rounds.
It is understood that Wright traveled home via Poland with another volunteer soldier who was driving the vehicle. Polish border officials seized multiple ammunition magazines and charged the driver but failed to spot the remaining contents. The driver was charged and received a suspended sentence in Poland.
According to Richmondshire Today’s court reporter, Wright stashed the cache inside his house without telling the authorities, before local police acted on a tip-off on Jan. 31, 2024, and executed a firearms warrant at the remote property near the village of Leeming.
The stash reportedly included four hand grenades, a bag containing multiple rounds of ammunition including a loaded AK47 magazine, as well as 29 rounds of 5.45mm cartridges originating from Ukraine and a further 104 rounds of Ukrainian-branded ammunition. All the grenades had their fuses removed but were prohibited under the Explosive Substances Act.
Wright reportedly told arresting officers: “There’s things in the house that came back from Ukraine. I was searched at the borders, and I’ve got stuff here that wasn’t found.”
Wright claimed he didn’t realize that the other man had secreted the grenades and ammunition in his own vehicle until he unloaded the car upon returning to the UK, which he then found under a spare tire.
Following his arrest, Wright was sectioned at a mental health unit and had apparently suffered mental health issues all his life which were exacerbated by his experiences in Ukraine. He had previous convictions for possessing an offensive weapon and for burglary, for which he received a suspended prison sentence in 2007.
Defense barrister Robert Mochrie said it was Wright’s “travelling companion” who brought the weapons and ammo back from Ukraine and that Wright was unaware.
Judge Richard Clews described Wright’s actions as “brave but foolhardy,” noting that the weapons and ammunition were of the kind that “Ukraine needed to help defend itself against an enemy invasion.”
Clews said that Wright had no sinister motive for bringing back what he described as “some kind of macabre souvenir or trophy of the battlefield,” adding that the experiences had “taken a toll” on Wright’s mental health and that he “wasn’t thinking straight.”
Noting that a “deterrent” jail sentence was required, Clews suspended the sentence for 24 months because of mitigatory factors and ordered Wright to complete 20 rehabilitation activity sessions.