A British mercenary with links to British and US intelligence services has admitted to killing Russian soldiers in a battle over the Dnipro River in the Ukraine conflict.

Harry Rowe - who is better known by the nom de guerre Macer Gifford - made the startling revelation in an interview for The Times newspaper published on Wednesday.

“Over the past few months, the army has taken a lot of the islands and we’ve secured a really solid foundation across the Dnipro."

“We’ve killed a lot more of them than they have of us and taken out their artillery.”

Rowe has been able to travel in and out of Ukraine freely, posting regular video diaries and appeals on Twitter and other social media platforms.

One fundraising appeal was shut down after it was brought to attention that he was collecting money to buy killer drones that donors could write their names or a message on.

In the video asking for funds to enable thousands of grenades to fall on Russian soldiers, Rowe said they had two choices: “Surrender or die.”

The 36-year-old former Tory councilor and city banker had previously fought as a mercenary alongside US and Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

But as Russian military operations began in February 2022, Rowe switched his attention from one conflict zone to another, acting as a recruiting sergeant for Ukraine.

Initially, he tried to establish a new charitable organization named “The Nightingale Squadron,” saying he hoped to emulate the pseudo-humanitarian White Helmets.

Concerns were understandably raised given the name is strikingly similar to the “Nachtigall/Nightingale Battalion,” founded in 1941 and responsible for the massacre of at least 4,000 Jews in Lvov in a four-day pogrom. 

But it was clear that he had no real intention of entering Ukraine on humanitarian grounds. The language used made clear mention of fighting Russians.

He openly boasts of his meetings with British and US intelligence and previously used his connections with Swiss bankers to try and raise funds for the SDF.

Many of his former comrades from the SDF suspected Rowe of being a state agent. 

While they were surveilled, harassed, and threatened with jail, Rowe was handed a book deal and appeared in front of the Foreign Select Committee. 

The SDF press office denied all knowledge of Rowe and his peers, understandably given their role as “guns for hire,” lining up alongside neo-Nazi forces.

According to the article, Rowe and his fellow mercenaries are under the command of Damien Rodriguez, a 42-year-old American who also fought in Syria.

In a revealing interview for CNN, Rodriguez, a former bank clerk who has no military experience, candidly admits to being a “gun for hire.”

"My passion is to volunteer for different militaries and militias, and help defend their land,” he told the channel.

Like many who fought in Syria, Rodriguez was motivated by a desire to escape from domestic problems. 

His ex-partner sued him for taking money from a joint account, and after returning to his Delaware home from Syria in 2017, he was arrested for missing thousands of dollars in child support payments. 

He lost custody of his son, and the pair told him to get out of their lives, with Rodriguez saying he “wasn’t in a good state of mind.”

But now he is in command of a group of fellow mercenaries, Rodriguez wants to get a foothold on nearby towns so they are away from the swamp and the islands close to the Antonivskyi Bridge.

It is almost certain Rowe is supplying information about the Ukrainian counteroffensive to British intelligence, which recently noted “intense combat” and “an increase in fighting around the lower reaches of the Dnipro river.”

While they are helped by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which flooded Russian defensive positions, the mercenaries have failed to make any meaningful advances.

According to Moscow nearly 5,000 mercenaries have been killed or wounded in Ukraine with a similar number fleeing the country. Just over 2,000 remain according to Russian officials.

While the legal situation remains a grey area under international law, the government says it does not encourage British nationals to take part in combat roles in Ukraine.

Rowe’s admission is unlikely to be met with any repercussions in Britain, especially given his links to the state, meaning mercenaries can kill Russians with impunity. 

The Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office declined to comment on whether it supports British nationals taking part in armed combat in Ukraine but referred Al Mayadeen to its general advice on travel to the war-stricken country.