Mystery surrounds the fate of a football hooligan who gave up fighting on the stands to back Ukraine’s army against Vladimir Putin’s invading Russian forces.
Robert Grady, who is a former member of the Hibs causal gang of the Capital City Service, posted a video in April, 2022, of himself alongside two Ukrainian fighters on his Facebook page, claiming that he intended to fight against the Russian invasions in order to to “kill as many as I can”.
Wearing body armour and holding an assault rifle, the grandfather said: “My name is Rob. I’m a 61-year-old grandfather from Scotland.
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“I’ve travelled to Ukraine to help Ukraine fight the Russians.
“I’ll do anything I can in my power to save Ukraine from Putin.
“Everybody in the world please help Ukraine.”
(Image: Robert Grady/ Facebook)
However, in the year since he announced he was fighting in Ukraine, he has gone off the radar.
His last post on social media was in August, a few weeks after he confirmed he was still in Ukraine.
He changed his Facebook profile picture to an image of the Scottish flag with a Ukraine army bag superimposed over the top.
A few weeks prior to the August 1, 2022, post he changed the image to a photo of himself in full army gear – although he was sporting football shorts – while holding a camouflage assault rifle.
(Image: Robert Grady/ Facebook)
When asked where he was, he replied that he was “still in Ukraine”.
Friends commented that he looks as if he had “lost some amount of weight,” while others urged him to “stay safe”.
Although the 61-year-old was not a prolific user of social media, he would post images every few days while out in Ukraine.
He claimed at the time to be a member of the Territorial Army, and was among the first wave of fighters to join, alongside those from Georgia, Albania, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, India, Italia, Kazakhstan, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK, America, and Uzbekistan.”
(Image: Robert Grady/ Facebook)
Putin has so far lost more than 600k men in battle, with more than 70% of those being those who have been injured so badly that they can no longer return to fight on the front line.
The Daily Star reached out to the Foreign Office to see if they had any details on the whereabouts of Mr Grady, but they declined to comment.
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