The court of the city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday decided to arrest the defector from “Wagner” Pavlo Nikolin, who opened fire on Russian policemen, motivating his act by the fact that he allegedly met with the Ukrainian military in civilian clothes. This is reported by Medusa.

Earlier, one of the most popular Russian news channels, Baza, reported that the man is a former inmate of the IK-4 colony in the city of Ufa, who was serving a sentence for theft and robbery.

He was recruited under the watchful eye of Wagner’s mercenary group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, to fight in Ukraine, but eventually defected from the front, according to the same source.

Nikolin told the court that he fell behind his group, got lost and did not know that he had crossed the Russian border back.

When asked why he shot at the police, he told the judges:

“I thought they were Ukrainians. Due to the fact that they were not in uniform and did not provide documents, they began to follow me.”

Nikolin also stated that he surrendered to the special forces without resistance after seeing their badges.

Wagner’s mercenary got “lost” 20 kilometers inside the Russian border

Russian media reported early Tuesday that a police officer was injured after a man “clad in camouflage” opened fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on police officers in the city of Novoshakhtinsk, Rostov Oblast, which is 20 km from the border with Ukraine.

In court, Nikolin confirmed that he was a mercenary from “Wagner”, but refused to provide details on this matter.

He was detained in a nearby village on Wednesday, and the prosecutor’s office opened a case against him for insult and violation of the ammunition regime.

Since the beginning of July, Russian investigative journalists wrote that Wagner’s group, which is considered the Kremlin’s private army, began recruiting in Russian prisons, and later videos appeared showing Prigozhin personally participating in the recruitment.

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