Hayden Davis, a 33-year-old former British soldier, surrendered more than 18 months ago when he joined the Ukrainian foreign legion as a volunteer. Now he's telling his story - and the picture taking shape is both heroic and shameful: for the man, and for the government that saw him off.

Captured by Russian forces in Ukraine, sentenced to 15 years in a penal colony on charges of being a "mercenary." Davis describes the moments before capture: his radio broke, his partner was killed. "I had to decide - either lie there and die, or do something. I slowly dragged myself 150 metres to an area I knew. It took me all day."

He hid in a basement for two months, with crutches made from wood and a splint from branches. "I've never felt pain like it in my life." When Russian soldiers found him, the next stage of his tragedy began: a penal colony with no proper medical care, no food, no help.

The British Foreign Office insists it is maintaining "consular contact" with Davis's family and that the Russian court's ruling is "unfounded." That's a diplomatic line that literally means: "We're not doing much for him."

Political activists working with military prisoners describe the condition of Western fighters in Russian captivity as "starvation." Humanitarian help is urgent. And that opens the broader question: the governments that give implicit support to foreign volunteers in Ukraine (and Britain isn't alone), when will they also take responsibility when those volunteers get captured?

For the Balkans, this isn't a distant story. Many of our own - Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians - fight on both sides in Ukraine. When they're caught, governments treat them as "mercenaries," not as citizens. Davis isn't the first, and he won't be the last. A question for some honest soul-searching at home: which of us knows the deal before walking into someone else's war?