Wagner fighter seeks asylum after dramatic escape to Norway

A former Russian paramilitary preventing in Ukraine has promised to present proof in opposition to the infamous Wagner group after making a dramatic escape and looking for asylum in Norway.

Andrei Medvedev says he’s a former commander of a Wagner unit who left the entrance traces in November and went on the run till he clambered throughout two border fences in northern Norway final week.

Tarjei Sirma-Tellefsen, police chief of employees within the Norwegian area of Finnmark, stated {that a} border patrol that additionally included the navy arrested the person early on Friday after he illegally crossed from Russia.

Medvedev’s high-profile escape is the primary recognized occasion of a former member of Wagner defecting to the west since president Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion final February.

In a video posted on Sunday by Vladimir Osechkin, an exiled Russian human rights activist, Medvedev stated he fled from the entrance traces in November after 4 months preventing in Ukraine.

Medvedev claimed Wagner had prolonged his contract indefinitely after it expired and threatened him with extrajudicial reprisals if he refused to combat.

He stated he went underground in Russia for 2 months, then crossed the ice-clad Pasvik river, fleeing guards who fired gunshots and despatched canine to chase him, till he reached Norway.

As soon as there, Medvedev requested for assist from a close-by Norwegian home, police stated.

Norwegian intelligence stated it was following the case, and Medvedev’s lawyer stated he was positive authorities in each Norway and internationally would wish to query him.

“It’s apparent that he will likely be checked out in each doable means,” Brynjulf Risnes, his lawyer, informed state broadcaster NRK. “First, you need to test if what he says is true. There are absolutely many individuals who suppose this may very well be a provocation. The Norwegian authorities will in all probability preserve all choices open.”

Risnes informed NRK that Medvedev had already been interviewed by immigration authorities, and there have been no present suspicions of him having dedicated warfare crimes.

Wagner and its chief Evgeny Prigozhin, a former caterer often known as “Putin’s chef,” have taken an more and more outstanding position on the entrance traces in Ukraine as Russia’s common military continues to battle with inefficient command and logistics points.

Final week, Wagner and Russia’s defence ministry each claimed to have taken the lead in capturing Soledar, the one city in Ukraine that Russia has taken after its offensive started to sputter in the summertime.

The uncommon success was the primary high-level official acknowledgment of Wagner’s position after years of denying its involvement in conflicts from jap Ukraine to Syria and Africa.

“The nation should know and is aware of its heroes, each those that serve within the armed forces and the Wagner group,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov informed reporters on Monday. “Everyone seems to be working for a typical trigger: everyone seems to be preventing for the motherland,” he stated.

Wagner’s deployment in front-line areas like Bakhmut and Svatove, the place it has fought in brutal positional battles, was already an open secret by the point Prigozhin admitted he led Wagner, in September 2022.

This transfer was a part of a publicity marketing campaign geared toward establishing himself because the chief of a hardline faction important each of Russia’s navy management and oligarchical elite.

Prigozhin’s full-throated assist for the warfare and his fame for brutality seems to have received the group vital state backing, at the same time as Wagner celebrates on social media its personal obvious position in brutal killings of Ukrainian captives and its personal males.

The previous caterer has overtly toured prisons to recruit convicts to combat in Ukraine, whereas Wagner has been prominently featured on state tv and marketed for recruits on billboards throughout Russia.

The Kremlin has not confirmed that convicts are getting used within the preventing. Nonetheless, in December, Putin awarded Aik Gasparyan, a Wagner fighter and convicted armed robber, with a medal for “valour” on New Yr’s Eve in a public ceremony.

Wagner-linked media have posted a number of movies during which Prigozhin vows to shoot “deserters.” One video final November appeared to indicate one of many group’s ex-convict fighters, Evgeny Nuzhin, being murdered with a sledgehammer.

Prigozhin revelled within the notoriety: a Wagner-linked channel on social media app Telegram posted a picture of a sledgehammer stained with pretend blood that the paramilitary chief allegedly despatched to the European parliament. Prigozhin’s catering firm Harmony posted a brand new 12 months’s message that includes a cake embellished with sledgehammer-wielding rabbits.

Medvedev, who claimed to have commanded Nuzhin’s unit, denied he had participated in warfare crimes however stated he had seen Wagner’s inside safety forces perform a number of executions of its personal males in the event that they refused to combat.

He stated Wagner’s commanders had been detached as to if its troops lived or died, claiming as many as 15 to twenty may very well be killed in simply in the future of fight.

“There was a threat they’d seize me and kill me, shoot me or do one thing worse — like they did to Nuzhin, simply dying by sledgehammer,” he stated.

Further reporting by Anastasia Stognei in Riga