Andrey Medvedev, the former commander of Wagner PMC prisoner Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was killed with a sledgehammer, told The Insider that he knows of ten cases where the Wagnerites executed their mercenaries who refused to participate in hostilities. According to him, he personally attended several executions.
According to Medvedev, two of the ten executed, of whom he knows, were not former prisoners.
He spoke in detail about one of the cases of the murder of “refuseniks”: “They were wounded and went to the hospital near Pervomaisk, and from there they tried to escape. They were taken to the border at a checkpoint. A group of MEDs arrived and shot.” Medvedev explained that the MED group is a separate unit under the security service of PMC Wagner. “They are doing zeroing: they take the guys and [kill] either in a public way or in a non-public way, as it was with Nuzhin,” he said.
Medvedev assures that Nuzhin served in his unit. “He came from the colony, I personally led him to the position when he switched sides. I was shell-shocked that day, and I was evacuated to the hospital. The next day, SBs [security officials] came and asked me questions about this character.”
The identity of Medvedev was confirmed to The Insider by the head of Gulagu.Net, Vladimir Osechkin. Earlier, Gulagu.Net published Medvedev's appeal to the country's leadership and personally to Vladimir Putin with a request to save his life in case he was caught by mercenaries from Wagner PMC.
Yevgeny Nuzhin is a prisoner who signed a contract with the Wagner PMC and went to war. Shortly after he ended up in Ukraine, he surrendered and gave several interviews from there, where he said that he did not support the war and wanted to stay in Ukraine. On November 13, a video was distributed on the networks in which Nuzhin was killed with a sledgehammer. Later it turned out that Nuzhin was exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners and handed over to the Wagnerites.
In early December, The Insider became aware of the death of convicted Viktor Sevalnev, who commanded the 7th motorized rifle company of the so-called people's militia of the "LNR". He called his wife from the hospital and told her that he was being taken to be shot because the soldiers of his company had deserted. Literally a few days later, his wife was informed that he had died and asked to take the body.
Human rights activist Olga Romanova, in an interview with We Can Explain, said that she personally knew about 40 executions of prisoners who went to war. Prigozhin himself, during the recruitment of prisoners, warned them about executions: “No one backs down, no one retreats, no one surrenders. When you are instructed on surrendering, you will be told about two grenades that you should have with you. <…> For those who arrive and on the first day say: “I got somewhere wrong”, we make a “deserter” mark, and after that execution follows,” he said in a video from one of the colonies.
In addition to the “execution” of Nuzhin, another video from 2017 was published on social networks, where Wagnerites in Syria crack down on a deserter from the Syrian army with a sledgehammer.
According to a report by analytics company NewsGuard, during the war, about 160 videos appeared on TikTok that showed or praised acts of violence committed by Wagner PMC mercenaries. Earlier, MEPs from different parties called on the European Union to include Wagner PMCs in the list of terrorist organizations. In response, Prigozhin handed over to the European Parliament a sledgehammer engraved with PMC Wagner and fake blood.