A British socialist was facing life in prison for terrorist offences after he travelled to Moscow to help Russian-backed rebels fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine.

Benjamin Stimson, 41, was arrested when he flew back to Manchester after giving a BBC interview in which he said that he was prepared to kill people in an act of war.

Stimson, from Oldham, spent four months in the Donbass region in 2015 helping separatist militia loyal to the Kremlin battling to become a self-proclaimed state after the Ukrainian revolution in 2014.

He was interviewed by the BBC while with the Donbass militia in eastern Ukraine in October 2015 and was filmed wearing a mask to avoid reprisals for his family in Britain.

The former businessman, an admirer