The former Wagner mercenary says, exclusively to CNN, that the brutality he witnessed in Ukraine ultimately motivated him to defect.

Wagner fighters were often sent into battle without much instruction, and the company’s treatment of resisting recruits was ruthless, Andrei Medvedev told CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper from the Norwegian capital, where he seeks refuge after crossing the country’s Arctic border with Russia.

“They rounded up those who did not want to fight and shot them in front of the newcomers,” he says. “They brought two prisoners who refused to go to war and shot them in front of everyone. They buried them in trenches dug by practitioners.”

The 26-year-old, who says he previously served in the Russian army, joined Wagner as a volunteer. He arrived in Ukraine less than ten days after signing the contract in July 2022 and served near Bakhmut, a front-line town in the Donetsk region. The mercenary group has become a key player in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Medvedev said that he was referring directly to the founders of the group, Dmitry Utkin, and the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

He calls Prigozhin a “devil”. “If he were a Russian hero, he would take a gun and run with the soldiers,” Medvedev said.

Prigozhin previously confirmed that Medvedev served in his company, saying he “should have been held accountable for attempting to mistreat prisoners.”

The former Wagner mercenary told CNN he did not want to comment on what he did during the fighting in Ukraine.

According to Medvedev, Wagner did not have a tactical strategy, and the troops were developing plans on the fly. “There was no real strategy. We simply received orders about the location of the enemy … There were no clear instructions on how to behave. We just planned how to do it, step by step. Who will open fire, what kind of shifts we will have … Where all this will lead is our problem, ”he said.

Medvedev spoke to CNN from Oslo after crossing the border in a daring defection in which he said he avoided capture “at least ten times” and dodged bullets from Russian troops. According to him, he crossed to Norway on a frozen lake, using white camouflage for cover.

He also said that from the sixth day of his stay in Ukraine, he knew that he did not want to return to another battle after seeing how the troops turned into “cannon fodder.”

He started with 10 men under his command, and that number increased once the prisoners were allowed to join, he said. “Corpses piled up, and more and more people came up to fight. In the end, there were a lot of people under my command,” he said. “I couldn’t count how many. There was constant mobility. The more deaths there were, the more prisoners arrived.”

Defense groups say the POWs told their families they would receive a payout of five million rubles (70,000 euros) if they died in the war.

But in reality “no one wanted to pay that much money,” Medvedev said. He stated that many Russians who died in the fighting in Ukraine were “declared missing.”

Medvedev became emotional during the interview, telling CNN he saw courage on both sides of the war.

“You know, I saw courage on both sides, and from the Ukrainian side, and with our guys too … I just want everyone to know this,” 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, propaganda in Russia will stop working, the people will rise up, our leaders will be judged, and a new leader will emerge.”

Wagner is often referred to as Putin’s unregistered troops. Since its inception in 2014, it has expanded its presence around the world and has been indicted for war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.

Asked if he feared he would suffer the same fate as another Wagner defector, Yevgeny Nuzin, who was killed with a sledgehammer, Medvedev said that Nuzin’s death prompted him to leave.

“I would just say it made me bolder and more determined,” he said.

Source: CNN