The violence he faced made him decide to flee from the ranks of the Wagner paramilitary group. In any case, this is what Andrei Medvedev, a 26-year-old Russian refugee in Norway, told CNN. In a video released by the NGO Gulagu.net, the man with a square face and very short hair claims to have fought in the Ukraine as head of a section of ten men within Wagner.
He says he left this sulphurous group when his four-month contract was extended against his will in November. But he says he made the decision to flee on his sixth day in Ukraine, after seeing the troops “turned into cannon fodder.”
“There were no real tactics [au sein du groupe, NDLR]… There are no specific orders on how we should act. We just planned how we were going to do it, step by step. Who would open fire… How it happened was our problem,” Andrei Medvedev told CNN.
“More and more corpses”
Wagner’s lack of strategy and extreme brutality seem to have discouraged several soldiers from fighting in his ranks. However, the mercenary group, suspected of numerous abuses in Ukraine, responds to the defection with violence, says Andrei Medvedev. “They rounded up those who didn’t want to fight and killed them in front of the new arrivals,” he illustrates.
“They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight and shot them in front of everyone and buried them directly in the trenches. There were more and more corpses ”, he continues.
In mid-January, Alexei Medvedev decided to run away. Under the bullets of Russian guards launched on his heels with dogs, he tells of having clandestinely crossed the Pasvik, a frozen river at this time of year and which marks the Russian-Norwegian border in the Far North.
“I heard dogs barking, I saw people with flashlights running in my direction. I heard two shots, the bullets whistled not far away (…) I ran on the ice helping myself with the light from the houses, for about two kilometers. “, he recalls in the Gulagu.net video.
Andrei Medvedev maintains that his “former employers tried to find him. They issued a wanted notice for a crime through the Russian Interior Ministry.” “He was under the threat of being kidnapped, killed, shot, or even worse, sentenced to a mace like Noujine,” another deserter whose gruesome execution with a mace was filmed and made public in mid-November. .
“Propaganda in Russia will stop working”
In response to Andrei Medvedev’s defection, Wagner noted that the latter had been in prison for “theft”. “He was going to be prosecuted for trying to assault the prisoners. He was so far on the wanted list. Be careful, he is very dangerous, ”Yevgeny Prigokhine reacted through his press service. Abuse Andrei Medvedev fiercely denies committing:
“I did not commit any crime. I refused to participate in Yevgeny Prigojine’s maneuvers, ”he assures Gulagu.net.
The former mercenary is now eager to share his story to help bring Yevguenyi Prigokhine and Russian President Vladimir Putin to justice. “Sooner or later the propaganda in Russia will stop working, the people will rise up and a new leader will emerge,” he predicted.
Wagner, “criminal organization”
The Wagner paramilitary group is often described as Putin’s underground army. It is led by businessman Yevgeny Prigokhine – whom Medvedev describes as a “devil” – and is accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine. He was notably very active in the fierce battle for the capture of Bakhmout, in the east of the country. At the end of January, the United States described it as an “international criminal organization”.
“Wagner is a criminal organization that commits great atrocities and human rights abuses,” according to White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, noting that the mercenary group has some “50,000” troops deployed in Ukraine, mostly sentenced prisoners in Russia.
Source: BFM TV
