The Dossier Center published the results of an investigation, during which it was possible to find out the names and details of the biographies of the Wagner PMC fighters, who killed a Syrian with a sledgehammer in 2017 and filmed it on camera. Some of these people are no longer alive, others have left PMCs and probably live in Russia.
The identity of one of the killers, Stanislav Dychko, was established in 2019 by Novaya Gazeta: in one of the videos from the place of execution, he appeared with an open face. As it turned out during the Dossier investigation, he was fired from the PMC "for health reasons" on the same day that the video of the murder appeared on the network. In 2021, Dychko died under unknown circumstances.
Among other participants in the murder of a Syrian citizen, investigators identified the following people.
- Jahongir Mirazorov. A native of Tajikistan, who lived in the Krasnodar Territory. He enlisted in Wagner PMC in 2015, traveled to Donbass, Syria and Africa. In 2018, Mirazorov was expelled for drug use. His further fate is unknown.
- Vladislav Apostol. A native of Moldova, who grew up in an orphanage in the Belgorod region. He has served in PMC since 2016. He died in 2018 in the Middle East.
- Mikhail Masharov. A native of Astrakhan, in Wagner PMC since 2017. According to the Dossier, Masharov was fired from the PMC after a recording of a murder in Syria, which he arbitrarily made on a smartphone, appeared on the network.
- Vladimir Kitaev. A native of Nakhodka, in PMC since 2015. After participating in the execution, he continued to serve, led a platoon in Africa.
- Vladislav Panchuk. A native of Starokonstantinov, Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine, registered in Bataysk, Rostov region of Russia. In PMC Wagner since 2015. Information about his dismissal from the PMC or death could not be found.
- Oleg Kongin. Born in Krasnoyarsk, lived in Goryachiy Klyuch, Krasnodar Territory, fought in Chechnya.
- Andrei Bakunovich. Citizen of Russia and Belarus. He was among the militants detained near Minsk in the summer of 2020 on suspicion of terrorism. Later it turned out that this was an operation of the Ukrainian special services, which gathered mercenaries who fought in the Donbass on behalf of a non-existent PMC. The operation was thwarted by the Belarusian KGB. Ultimately, the detained militants were released, almost all of them returned to Russia. The further fate of Bakunovich is unknown.
- Igor Krizhanovsky. He enlisted in the PMC Wagner in 2017, soon took part in the execution in Syria and died in battle the same year.
As the Dossier Center found out, the murder of a Syrian citizen, who appears in the documents under the name El-Ismail, was committed by Wagner fighters on the orders of his superiors: El-Ismail was accused of deserting from the Syrian army. Filming of the torture to which this man was subjected, his murder and mockery of the body was organized for the report. However, several participants in the execution arbitrarily filmed what was happening on their gadgets, and then these footage got on the Internet, which provoked an internal investigation at the PMC.
Documents related to this investigation were handed over to Dossier journalists by hackers who, according to them, were able to gain access to the servers of Yevgeny Prigozhin's Concord company. Thanks to these data, it was possible to find out the identity of the participants in the execution.
The "dossier" also names the person in whose direct subordination the killers were and who, apparently, gave the order for the massacre. This is the commander of the 4th assault detachment Nikolai Budko. He is a native of Belarus who moved to Russia in the 1990s and served in the riot police. His track record also includes service in the French Foreign Legion. He joined Wagner PMC in 2015. The Dossier material also mentions people who conducted an internal investigation into Wagner PMC fighters.