Oslo, Norway
Mahaz News
—
A former Wagner mercenary says the brutality he witnessed in Ukraine in the end pushed him to defect, in an unique Mahaz News interview on Monday.
Wagner fighters had been usually despatched into battle with little course, and the corporate’s remedy of reluctant recruits was ruthless, Andrei Medvedev instructed Mahaz News’s Anderson Cooper from Norway’s capital Oslo, the place he’s in search of asylum after crossing that nation’s arctic border from Russia.
“They would round up those who did not want to fight and shoot them in front of newcomers,” he alleges. “They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight and they shot them in front of everyone and buried them right in the trenches that were dug by the trainees.”
The 26-year-old, who says he beforehand served within the Russian navy, joined Wagner as a volunteer. He crossed into Ukraine lower than 10 days after signing his contract in July 2022, serving close to Bakhmut, the frontline metropolis within the Donetsk area. The mercenary group has emerged as a key participant in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Medvedev stated he reported on to the group’s founders, Dmitry Utkin and Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, whom he describes as “the devil.”
“If (Prigozhin) was a Russian hero, he would have taken a gun and run with the soldiers,” Medvedev stated.
In a press release emailed to Mahaz News on Tuesday, Prigozhin declined to touch upon “military issues” and described Wagner as an “exemplary military organization that complies with all the necessary laws and rules of modern wars.” The Wagner boss has beforehand confirmed that Medvedev had served in his firm, and stated that he “should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners.”
Medvedev instructed Mahaz News that he didn’t need to touch upon what he’d executed himself whereas combating in Ukraine.
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Medvedev spoke to Mahaz News from Oslo after crossing its border in a daring defection that, he says noticed him evade arrest “at least ten times” and dodge bullets from Russian forces. He crossed into Norway over an icy lake utilizing white camouflage to mix in, he stated.
He instructed Mahaz News that he knew by the sixth day of his deployment in Ukraine that he didn’t need to return for an additional tour after witnessing troops being changed into cannon fodder.
He began off with 10 males below his command, a quantity that grew as soon as prisoners had been allowed to affix, he stated. “There were more dead bodies, and more, and more, people coming in. In the end I had a lot of people under my command,” he stated. “I couldn’t count how many. They were in constant circulation. Dead bodies, more prisoners, more dead bodies, more prisoners.”
Wagner lacked a tactical technique, with troops developing with plans on the fly, Medvedev stated.
“There were no real tactics at all. We just got orders about the position of the adversary…There were no definite orders about how we should behave. We just planned how we would go about it, step by step. Who would open fire, what kind of shifts we would have…How it how it how it would turn out that was our problem,” he stated.
Advocacy teams say prisoners who enlisted had been instructed their households would obtain a pay-out of 5 million rubles ($71,000) in the event that they died within the battle.
But in actuality “nobody wanted to pay that kind of money,” Medvedev stated. He alleged that many Russians who died combating in Ukraine had been “just declared missing.”
Prigozhin dismissed the accusation in his response to Mahaz News, saying “to date, not a single case of non-payment of insurance pay-outs has been recorded in the Wagner Group.”
Medvedev was emotional at instances within the interview, telling Mahaz News that he noticed braveness on each side of the battle.
“You know, I saw courage on both sides, on the Ukrainian side as well, and our boys too… I just want them to know that,” he stated.
He added that he needs to now share his story with a view to assist carry Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin to justice.
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“Sooner or later the propaganda in Russia will stop working, the people will rise up and all our leaders …will be up for grabs and a new leader will emerge.”
Wagner is usually described as Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its footprint globally since its creation in 2014, and has been accused of battle crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.
When requested if he fears the destiny meted on one other Wagner defector, Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was murdered on digicam with a sledgehammer, Medvedev stated Nuzhin’s dying emboldened him to depart.
“I would just say that it made me bolder, more determined to leave,” he stated.
Correction: An earlier model of this story misstated the yr by which Medvedev entered Ukraine as a Wagner recruit.
Source web site: www.cnn.com
