MOSCOW: An Australian man will stand trial on mercenary charges in Russian-occupied Lugansk, the eastern region`s Moscow-installed authorities said on Friday, the latest foreign soldier fighting for Ukraine to appearbefore the court.

`The prosecutor`s office of the Lugansk Peoples Republic approved the indictment in the criminal case against 33-year-old citizen of the Commonwealth of Australia Oscar Charles Augustus Jenkins,` the authorities said in a statement.

According to the investigators, Jenkins came to Ukraine in February last year from Melbourne and then fought against the Russian army between March and December, for which he was paid $7,000-9,000 a month.

The Australian government has repeatedly called on Russia to release Jenkins, a former biology teacher.

After his capture in combat Jenkins first appeared in a video shared by a Russian military blogger in December, in which he was filmed being roughly interrogated under duress and slapped in the face.

He was then believed to have been killed in captivity, until Russia confirmed he was alive and later posted a video of the frail Australian`s medical examination, with the captors heard joking in the background that his blood pressure showed `he wasn`t dead`.

`We`ve made it clear to Russia that Mr Jenkins is a prisoner of war and that there are obligations that kick in in accordance with international humanitarian law and they must be observed,` Australia`s Prime Minister Antony Albanese told ABC Radio after the examination video was released.

Russia and its eastern Ukraine proxies typically consider foreigners travelling to fight in Ukraine as `mercenaries`.

This enables them to prosecute fighters under its criminal code, rather than treating them as captured prisoners of war with protections and rights under the Geneva Convention.

Most recently British man James Scott Rhys Anderson, 22, was charged with terrorism after he was caught in the Kursk region fighting on Ukraine`s side.-AFP