A former commander of Russia’s private military company Wagner has fled to Norway and is seeking asylum, according to Norwegian police and a Russian activist.
Andrei Medvedev, in an interview with a Russian activist who helps people seek asylum abroad, said he feared for his life after he refused to renew his service with the Wagner group.
Medvedev said that after fulfilling his contract and refusing to serve again, he feared he would be executed in the same way as Yevgeny Nuzhin, a Wagner defector who was killed on camera with a sledgehammer.
“We were thrown into the fight like cannon fodder,” Medvedev told Vladimir Osechkin, head of Gulagu.net, a human rights group, in a conversation posted on YouTube.
A spokesman for the Norwegian Police Security Service confirmed to CNN that Medvedev was in the country and was requesting asylum.
“So far, this is a local police investigation,” Eirik Veum told CNN . “But the security service, we are informed and we follow the investigation, of course.”
In a phone call from Norway with Osechkin that was published online, Medvedev said he crossed the border near the Russian town of Nikel. This is according to the Finnmark Police District report which, without naming Medvedev, said it made an arrest of a man in Pasvik on the Norwegian side of the border at 1:58 am on 13 January.
In his own account, Medvedev said he crossed the border and approached the first house he came across. “It was a miracle that I managed to get here,” he told Osechkin.
Medvedev had already tried to cross the border into Finland twice and failed, Osechkin told the CNN . Wagner’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin confirmed on Telegram that Medvedev served in his company and said he “should have been prosecuted for trying to mistreat prisoners”.
In a December conversation with Osechkin, posted on YouTube, Medvedev denied having committed any crimes in Ukraine.
“I signed a contract with the group on July 6, 2022. I had been appointed commander of the first squadron of the 4th platoon of the 7th assault detachment”, he recalled. “When the prisoners started to arrive, the situation at Wagner changed a lot. They stopped treating us like humans.”
He claimed that the prisoners were “shot to death for refusing to fight or for treason”.
“I fear for my life,” Medvedev said in December. “I have not committed any crime. I refused to participate in Yevgeny Prigozhin’s maneuvers.”
Osechkin told CNN who started helping Medvedev after being approached by a friend in late November.
Source: CNN Brasil
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