The 26-year-old Russian Andrei Medvedev, declares former mercenary of the paramilitary organization Wagnerand asks to be given to him asylum in Norway as he claims they threatened to kill him.
The same managed to escape, crossing the Russian-Norwegian border into the Arcticand was arrested after illegally crossing the border on the night of Thursday into Friday, his Norwegian lawyer, Bryndjulf Risnes, told AFP.
“He is willing to talk about his experience in the Wagner organization to people investigating war crimes”he said.
In an interview broadcast by the NGO Gulagu, he explains that his contract was extended against his willafter several months that he was fighting in Ukraine in the service of this Russian organization headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“My former employers tried to find me, the Wagner company, Prigozhin and his gang, the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service). They issued (against me) a wanted notice for a crime through the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs“, claimed the 26-year-old.
“They threatened to kidnap me, kill me, shoot me, or even worse, execute me like Nuzin”an ex-convict and deserter from Wagner, whose brutal sledgehammer execution was filmed and published in mid-November.
Asserting that he was the leader of a unit of ten menrelates that he crossed a frozen river, the Pasvik, which separates Russia from Norway in the far north, with a Russian patrol chasing him.
“I heard dogs barking, turned around, saw people with flashlights, about 150 meters away, running in my direction,” he said.
“I heard two shots, the bullets could be heard from far away (…) I was running on the ice, with the lights of the houses helping me, for about two kilometers,” he continued.
According to his lawyer, at he then went to Norwegians explaining that he had crossed the border illegally, before being arrested by the police shortly afterwards.
According to Bryndjulf Risnes, his client had decided not to renew his contract with Wagner after experiencing “something completely different from what he expected”.
AFP could not independently confirm that the young Russian fought in Wagner’s ranks.
Source: News Beast
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