Not just Nuzhin: Wagner Group militants have executed another ten objectors

Andrei Medvedev, the former commander of Yevgeny Nuzhin – the convict recruited by the Wagner Group [a Russian paramilitary organisation - ed.] who was murdered with a sledgehammer for "treason" – is aware of over ten cases of Wagner militants executing mercenaries who refused to participate in the war. 

Source: Medvedev in an interview with Russian media outlet The Insider

Details: Medvedev said he had witnessed several of the executions. He also said two of the executed mercenaries were not former prisoners. 

He described one of the cases in detail. 

Quote: "They [the objectors] were wounded and taken to a hospital near Pervomaiske. They tried to escape and were caught at a border checkpoint. The MED group arrived and shot them."

More details: Medvedev explained that the MED group is a separate unit within Wagner’s security service. 

"They’re in charge of ‘zeroing’: taking guys and [killing them] either publicly or less openly, as in Nuzhin’s case," he said.

Medvedev said Nuzhin served in his unit: "He arrived from the penal colony, I personally escorted him to his position the day he switched sides. I suffered a concussion that day and was taken to hospital. The next day the Wagner Security Service came to me asking about this guy."

He claimed that Wagner’s recruited mercenaries do not receive any money, nor do their families get the promised payments in the event of their death.

"Half of the combatants that have been evacuated are officially listed as missing. Why do they do that? To avoid paying insurance for their deaths, because no insurance company would ever cover such a staggering amount of losses; no insurance company would ever take that on," Medvedev said. 

Medvedev’s identity was confirmed to The Insider by Vladimir Osechkin, head of the media project Gulagu.Net. Earlier, Gulagu.Net had published Medvedev’s appeal to the government and Vladimir Putin personally, asking them to save his life if he was captured by Wagner mercenaries. 

Medvedev is now on the run; he told The Insider that the Wagner Group is after him. He claims that he has a video of mercenaries being executed in Alchevsk, Luhansk Oblast, and this video will be published if anything happens to him. Medvedev says the video shows two convicts being executed for refusing to fight. According to him, when he himself escaped, everyone in his unit was detained.

In early December, The Insider learned about the death of a former convict, Viktor Sevalnev, who commanded the 7th motorised rifle company of the so-called people’s militia of the "Luhansk People’s Republic". He called his wife from the hospital and told her he was going to be shot because soldiers from his company had deserted. A few days later, his wife was informed that he had been killed and asked to collect his body. 

Human rights activist Olga Romanova said in an interview to We Can Explain [Mozhem Obyasnit, a Russian media project] that she personally knows of 40 cases of recruited convicts being executed. 

According to The Insider, Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin himself warns prisoners about the executions when they are recruited. "No one backs down, no one retreats, no one surrenders. When you are trained, you will be told about the two grenades that you must have with you when surrendering. (...) Those who arrive on the first day and say, ‘I must have come to the wrong place’ are marked as ‘deserters’ and later executed," he said in a video from one of the penal colonies.

Background: 

• On 13 November, it became known that Russian citizen Yevgeny Nuzhin had been brutally executed without trial by having his head taped to concrete and hit with a sledgehammer. Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin has hinted that this was the work of his mercenaries. The video may have been intended to discourage Russian conscripts from surrendering.
• On 20 September, the Russian State Duma introduced the concepts of "mobilisation" and "wartime" into the Criminal Code and approved amendments regarding responsibility for desertion during mobilisation and wartime. On 24 September, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law amending the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with respect to the penalties for desertion, looting and deliberate surrender. 
• The recruitment of convicts from penal colonies in Siberia and the Far East only intensified after the video of Nuzhin’s sledgehammer execution was posted - in November alone, the paramilitary organisation mobilised convicts from at least six regions east of the Urals, taking 150-200 people from each penal colony.

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