A Taiwanese army veteran fighting in a volunteer battalion in Ukraine has been killed.

Details are unclear but he was apparently badly wounded and died from loss of blood when his unit came under attack from Russian troops in Luhansk Oblast.

He was one of 10 Taiwanese soldiers fighting from the country after answering an appeal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for volunteers.

The Taiwan Foreign Ministry, which is helping the family with the funeral arrangements, confirmed that Tseng Sheng-kuang, 25, is the first Taiwanese soldier who has died in the conflict.

In a statement, they said: “We express our sincere condolences for our countryman who sacrificed his life for the war in Ukraine, and pay tribute to his spirit of assisting the Ukrainians in defending freedom and democracy.”

The dead man was from Taiwan’s indigenous Amis minority and was reportedly an army veteran.

Tseng spoke to his wife for the last time on 23rd October when he said he was setting off on a five-day mission.

Two weeks later, she received a message written by a colleague and sent from Tseng’s mobile phone number, which said that her husband had been injured while fighting and had died on the way to the hospital.

Many people in Taiwan publicly sympathise with the situation in Ukraine, with it often being compared to Taiwan’s own relationship with a powerful, hostile power on their doorstep, namely China.

China claims that Taiwan belongs to it and rejects self-rule.