OSLO: After fleeing across the Russian border into Norway in a harrowing escape, a former Wagner mercenary could now shed valuable light on the Russian paramilitary group’s brutal methods in Ukraine.
Analysts say Andrei Medvedev, who dodged bullets fired by Russian border guards hot on his heels with attack dogs in the middle of the Arctic night, could provide important evidence in war crimes investigations against Moscow.
The 26-year-old crossed the border illegally last week to seek asylum in Norway, dashing across the frozen Pasvik river that divides Russia and the Scandinavian country in the far north.
In a video published at the weekend by rights group Gulagu.net, the Russian says he fought in Ukraine as a Wagner unit commander for between five and 10 soldiers.
He claims he deserted when the controversial group extended his four-month contract against his will in November.
“He’s a person of interest, mainly as a first-hand witness within the Wagner Group... including for any future post-war tribunals on the atrocities committed in Ukraine,” said Tor Bukkvoll, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.
“He was probably in Bakhmut,” a town in eastern Ukraine that Russian troops have been trying to seize for months, he told AFP.
“And he could reveal things from the inside that no one else has been able to speak about.”
In an interview with news site The Insider in December, Medvedev said he knew of 10 Wagner mercenaries executed by the group because they refused to return to fight in Ukraine.
He claimed to have in his possession a video showing the killing of two of them, and said it would be published if anything bad ever happened to him.
Medvedev said one of the men under his command was Evgeny Nuzhin, who was accused of surrendering to Ukrainian forces and killed with a sledgehammer by Wagner after he was returned to Russia in a prisoner swap.
AFP has not been able to independently verify Medvedev’s account.
Briefly arrested upon his arrival in Norway and then released, Medvedev has or will soon be questioned by both Norwegian immigration authorities and the criminal police (Kripos), which is taking part in an international inquiry into war crimes in Ukraine.
“He claims himself to have been a member of Wagner, and it is of interest to Kripos to obtain more information about this period,” police said Tuesday.
Medvedev’s Norwegian lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, told AFP his client was “willing to speak about his experiences in the Wagner Group to people who are investigating war crimes.”
According to the lawyer, the deserter was carrying several USB sticks on him during his escape to Norway.
“What he has to say is interesting because we don’t have a lot of first-hand accounts from Wagner soldiers, but there are two things to take into consideration here,” researcher Bukkvoll said.
“Firstly, Wagner’s brutality has been notorious for a long time, even before the Ukraine conflict, including in Syria where the group killed prisoners of war,” he continued.
“And Medvedev seems to have been of pretty low rank in the organization and it is therefore unlikely that he will be able to reveal anything about what has gone on in the higher ranks.”
Questions have been raised about Wagner’s relationship with the Russian military, with numerous observers citing tensions between the two.
Wagner head Evgeny Prigozhin is believed to have political ambitions and is seen as using the group as a rival force to the Russian army.
While Prigozhin recently boasted that Wagner troops alone seized the town of Soledar from Ukrainian troops after fierce fighting, the Kremlin has insisted there is no conflict between it and the army.
Meanwhile, Wagner — which has heavily recruited soldiers from Russian prisons — reacted to Medvedev’s defection with irony.
Medvedev was given a two-year suspended sentence for theft and ended up serving part of his sentence after a conflict with authorities, according to his Norwegian lawyer.
“He was to be prosecuted for having tried to assault prisoners,” Prigozhin said through his press service earlier this week.
“He was until now on the wanted list. Watch out, he’s very dangerous.”
Russian deserter in Oslo ready to spill Wagner’s secrets
https://arab.news/2wvjc
Russian deserter in Oslo ready to spill Wagner’s secrets
- Andrei Medvedev dodged bullets and attack dogs when crossing from Russia into Norway
- Tor Bukkvoll: ‘He’s a person of interest, mainly as a first-hand witness within the Wagner Group’
Bangladesh mourns Khaleda Zia, its first woman prime minister
- Ousted ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who imprisoned Zia in 2018, offers condolences on her death
- Zia’s rivalry with Hasina, both multiple-term PMs, shaped Bangladeshi politics for a generation
DHAKA: Bangladesh declared three days of state mourning on Tuesday for Khaleda Zia, its first female prime minister and one of the key figures on the county’s political scene over the past four decades.
Zia entered public life as Bangladesh’s first lady when her husband, Ziaur Rahman, a 1971 Liberation War hero, became president in 1977.
Four years later, when her husband was assassinated, she took over the helm of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, following the 1982 military coup led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, was at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.
Arrested several times during protests against Ershad’s rule, she first rose to power following the victory of the BNP in the 1991 general election, becoming the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Zia also served as a prime minister of a short-lived government of 1996 and came to power again for a full five-year term in 2001.
She passed away at the age of 80 on Tuesday morning at a hospital in Dhaka after a long illness.
She was a “symbol of the democratic movement” and with her death “the nation has lost a great guardian,” Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus said in a condolence statement, as the government announced the mourning period.
“Khaleda Zia was the three-time prime minister of Bangladesh and the country’s first female prime minister. ... Her role against President Ershad, an army chief who assumed the presidency through a coup, also made her a significant figure in the country’s politics,” Prof. Amena Mohsin, a political scientist, told Arab News.
“She was a housewife when she came into politics. At that time, she just lost her husband, but it’s not that she began politics under the shadow of her husband, president Ziaur Rahman. She outgrew her husband and built her own position.”
For a generation, Bangladeshi politics was shaped by Zia’s rivalry with Sheikh Hasina, who has served as prime minister for four terms.
Both carried the legacy of the Liberation War — Zia through her husband, and Hasina through her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, widely known as the “Father of the Nation,” who served as the country’s first president until his assassination in 1975.
During Hasina’s rule, Zia was convicted in corruption cases and imprisoned in 2018. From 2020, she was placed under house arrest and freed only last year, after a mass student-led uprising, known as the July Revolution, ousted Hasina, who fled to India.
In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on student protesters and remains in self-exile.
Unlike Hasina, Zia never left Bangladesh.
“She never left the country and countrymen, and she said that Bangladesh was her only address. Ultimately, it proved true,” Mohsin said.
“Many people admire Khaleda Zia for her uncompromising stance in politics. It’s true that she was uncompromising.”
On the social media of Hasina’s Awami League party, the ousted leader also offered condolences to Zia’s family, saying that her death has caused an “irreparable loss to the current politics of Bangladesh” and the BNP leadership.
The party’s chairmanship was assumed by Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Dhaka just last week after more than 17 years in exile.
He had been living in London since 2008, when he faced multiple convictions, including an alleged plot to assassinate Hasina. Bangladeshi courts acquitted him only recently, following Hasina’s removal from office, making his return legally possible.
He is currently a leading contender for prime minister in February’s general elections.
“We knew it for many years that Tarique Rahman would assume his current position at some point,” Mohsin said.
“He should uphold the spirit of the July Revolution of 2024, including the right to freedom of expression, a free and fair environment for democratic practices, and more.”
