Holiday snaps of British backpacker who went to Ukraine and was airlifted from Taliban invasion

It is August 15, 2021 and Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, is in a state of violent social and political upheaval.

There is panic and chaos in the streets as thousands of Afghan men, women and children abandon their homes and businesses, leaving behind all their hard-fought possessions in a frantic rush to the airport and the elusive prospect of security.

From the hills and countryside overlooking the city, a horde of shadowy gun-wielding Taliban insurgents steadily seep into Kabul and begin setting up checkpoints with armored vehicles.

Civilians are rounded up and told to return to their homes, those who refuse are beaten, some who try to flee the country entirely are lined up and shot in the street.

In other places, civilian targets are hit with bombs that kill people indiscriminately.

Against this backdrop of immense human tragedy, a 21-year-old Loughborough University student is also having a day to remember.

While there, he posed with an assault rifle that he claimed was given to him by the SAS.

Miles shared photos of himself hiding from the Taliban on his social media channels during the trip.

Miles Routledge, who had traveled to the war-torn country against all guidance from the Foreign Office for “fun” a few days earlier, found his way to a NATO compound.

While there, he claims to be invited to hold an assault rifle by “drunken British SAS soldiers” and shares an image on social media.

A few days later, Miles is flown out of the country on a military plane and taken to Dubai; others are not so lucky.

However, the public reaction to Miles’ stunt was less than warm.

When news broke that a British student had essentially gone off to have fun in a war zone, Miles was labeled an “idiot” on social media and his conduct was scrutinized and criticized in the press.

However, the Afghanistan saga was only the beginning of a ‘career’ for Miles, one that has been described as reckless at best and blatantly inappropriate at best.

Since his days in Kabul, the self-described “British supremacist”, now 23, has traveled to a host of dangerous places, ostensibly for “war journalism and charity”.

Shortly after returning from Afghanistan, Miles sets his sights on Kazakhstan, which was experiencing a period of civil unrest due to rising energy prices.

Thousands traveled through Kabul in the days before the Taliban took over the country

He claims to have been the last person to obtain a tourist visa for Afghanistan.

Eventually, he was flown out of the country after the Taliban took control.

With Russian militia patrolling the streets under “shoot to kill” orders, Miles shares photos with his followers of him smiling in the snow.

Shortly after, in February 2022, with tensions on the Eastern European border on the verge of breaking down, Miles travels to the Ukraine just as Putin’s troops invade.

Sharing photos and videos of a bombing raid on kyiv, Miles poses in military uniform and shares videos of bomb shelters.

He claims to distribute charity to the vulnerable during his efforts and alleges that Ukrainian soldiers mistook him for a Russian spy.

As with his ill-fated trips to Afghanistan, Miles stands accused of exploiting human tragedy for attention.

After the Ukraine expedition, Miles hatches a series of smaller plans, from sailing to the Isle of White on a boat (and failing) to returning to Afghanistan to shoot guns with the Taliban.

Thousands then traveled to the Ukraine just as Russia invaded

Since his trip to Afghanistan, Miles traveled to Kazakhstan and attempted to cross the English Channel on a boat.

He was eventually forced to turn back during his journey.

In a video posted to his YouTube channel, Miles is seen firing a gun indiscriminately into the arena flanked by smiling members of the Taliban, or as Miles calls them: “Good guys.”

Grinning as the recoil hits him in the shoulder, Miles says, “I like this,” before firing another round into the sky.

Last month, he claimed to have traveled to the ‘Island of Snakes’, an isolated and forbidden island off the coast of Brazil, home to thousands of deadly snakes.

Images shared on social media show him apparently on the island in armor, however the snakes, of which there are reportedly 430,000, are not shown.

This, says Miles, may have been a step too far.

Speaking to the Mail, he explained how terribly he had lost control.

He said: ‘It’s the most dangerous island in the world after the UK.

The snakes there can liquefy your insides and their bite is essentially a 100% fatality rate.

I walked up the hill in my armor and then they told me we had to go. It would take too long to take my armor, so I had to run without it.

“He was just dressed in jeans and a shirt and with foliage up to his neck, he was not in control of the situation at all.”

For his latest trip, Miles visited the Island of Snakes off the coast of Brazil, a forbidden rock teeming with poisonous snakes.

To protect himself, Miles wore full armor which he claimed was effective.

The danger tourist says it was the only time in his travels that he felt like he had lost control

His adventures have earned him a large following on social media and he was even interviewed by disgraced influencer Andrew Tate, prior to his arrest on money laundering and people smuggling charges.

Eager to capitalize on the notoriety of his first voyage, Miles published a book in which makes a number of questionable claims about the events that led him to “goof around” with SAS units on the night of August 15, 2021.

He writes: ‘The soldiers were all drunk and enjoying themselves and began to tell me what they had experienced. {..}

‘One of them handed me his black license plate vest: ‘Here, put this on’.

“I put on my bulletproof vest, which was loaded with magazines stored in the front pockets in addition to the plates.

“They also gave me a gun, after profuse warnings not to take my finger off the trigger since they didn’t discharge it. I handed one of them my phone and smiled as I took a photo to mark the occasion.

When approached by MailOnline to clarify the alleged incident, the Ministry of Defense refused to confirm its veracity.

A spokesman said: “It has been the policy of successive governments neither to confirm nor to deny reports of special forces activity.”

The book titled ‘Lord Miles in Afghanistan’ contains many more claims about the student’s time in Kabul, including that he had tried to hide the fact that he was a Westerner by wearing a burqa as a ‘disguise’.

It also contains claims like ‘Polish language is nonsense’ and that Kabul, where horrific terrorist attacks are common, is safer than London.

Miles claims that his trips are funded exclusively by donations from generous donors.

Miles, who has said he is separated from his family, told the Mail that the venture was now his full-time job which he did with the help of donors who “liked his work.”

He explained: “Most of the trips like Afghanistan and the Ukraine I can do quite cheap, between £1000 and £2000, but some bigger ones like Brazil can cost more in the region of £1000.”

‘I make my money through fundraising and generous donors who like what I do.

“My next trip is a trip back to Afghanistan, I have some meetings with the Taliban, my goal is to establish a gold mine.”

After returning to Afghanistan many times, this trip would be Miles’s fourth visit under Taliban occupation, a prospect that does not concern him.

Asked why he would continue to associate himself with a group that Amnesty International says continues to commit “violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes,” Miles explains that “there are worse things.”

He said: ‘Over the last 20 years, they’ve gone from banning TV to being on TikTok, so they’re making progress.

“When you look at the different groups competing there, the only real alternative is ISIS, so I think it’s good to guide the Afghan people and hope they progress over time.”

No foreign government has formally acknowledged that the Taliban recognized the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the Taliban have called their administration since they seized power in 2021.