Oslo, Norway
CNN
–
A former Wagner recruit said the brutality he witnessed in Ukraine ultimately pushed him to defect, in an exclusive interview with CNN on Monday.
Wagner fighters are often sent into battle with little guidance, and the company’s treatment of recalcitrant recruits has been merciless, Andrei Medvedev told CNN’s Anderson Cooper from the Norwegian capital Oslo, where he has sought asylum across the Russian Arctic border.
“They round up those who don’t want to fight and shoot them in front of the new arrivals,” he charged. “They brought in two prisoners who refused to fight, shot them in front of everyone and buried them in the pits dug by the trainees.”
CNN could not independently verify the account and Wagner did not respond to a request for comment.
The 26-year-old, who claims to have served in the Russian army, volunteered to join Wagner. In the year Less than 10 days after signing the contract in July 2022, he crossed into Ukraine, serving near Bakhmut, a leading city in the Donetsk region. The mercenary group emerged as a key player during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Medvedev reports directly to the group’s founders, Dmitry Utkin and Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.
He calls Prigozhin “the devil”. “If he was a Russian hero, he would have grabbed his gun and run with the soldiers,” Medvedev said.
Prigozhin previously confirmed that Medvedev had served in the company and “should have been accused of trying to abuse prisoners.”
Medvedev told CNN he doesn’t want to comment on what he himself did when they fought in Ukraine.
Wagner did not have a tactical strategy, soldiers were making plans on the fly, Medvedev said.
“There were no real strategies at all. Now we had orders about the enemy’s position…there were no clear orders on how to behave. We plan how to do it step by step. “Who will open fire, what kind of shift will we have…how can it be that was our problem,” he said.
In an interview with CNN from Oslo, Medvedev said he had been arrested “at least ten times” and dodged Russian army fire after crossing the border with determination and courage. He crossed to Norway on a frozen lake.
He told CNN that on his sixth day of deployment to Ukraine, he saw his troops being turned into cannon fodder and knew they didn’t want to go back for another tour.
He said he started with 10 people in custody, and that number grew after inmates were allowed to join. “There were a lot of dead bodies, and more and more people were coming in. I finally had more people under my command,” he said. “I couldn’t count how many. They were in constant circulation. Corpses, more prisoners, more corpses, more prisoners.
Activists say registered prisoners were told their families would receive up to five million rubles ($71,000) if they died in the war.
But in fact, “nobody wanted to pay that kind of money,” Medvedev said. Many Russians who died fighting in Ukraine are “now reported missing,” he said.
Medvedev was emotional at times in the interview, telling CNN that he saw courage on both sides of the war.
“You know, I’ve seen courage on both sides, on the Ukrainian side, and I just want our kids to know that,” he said.
He added that he now wants to share his story to help bring Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin to justice.
Sooner or later the propaganda in Russia will stop working, the people will rise up and all our leaders… will prepare for elections and a new leader will emerge.
Wagner is often described as Putin’s off-the-book soldiers. In the year Since its creation in 2014, it has expanded its footprint internationally, and has been accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.
When asked if Medvedev feared the fate of another Wagner defendant, Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was killed on camera, he said Nuzhin’s death encouraged him to leave.
“Courage, I’m just saying I’m determined to leave.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the year Medvedev entered Ukraine as a Wagner recruit.