UPDATE: Prigozhin claims ex-Wagner Commander who defected to Norway is ‘dangerous’

An alleged ex-Wagner Commander who managed to escape to freedom in Norway is a ‘dangerous’ man claimed mercenary boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Tuesday, January 17 at 02:59am

Responding to an enquiry posted on the Telegram board of his Concorde press agency, Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin labelled the ex-Wagner Commander who escaped to Norway as a ‘dangerous’ man.

The question was posed: “The newspaper ‘Aftenposten’ (Norway) is asking for an answer to our question. On Sunday a man named Andrey Medvedev said he had managed to escape from Russia to Norway. He is now in Oslo”.

It continued: “Medvedev claims he is a former commander of the Wagner PMC and has witnessed crimes against humanity in Ukraine. What are the Wagner PMC’s comments on this story?”.

Concorde’s response read: “Yes, indeed, Andrey Medvedev worked in the Norwegian battalion of the Wagner PMC, which is called Nidhogg, as he had Norwegian citizenship. He should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners”.

It added: “Detailed materials are available at the Wagner PMC security service and have been prepared for handover to Russian law enforcement authorities. Until now he has been on the wanted list. Be careful, he is very dangerous”.

Monday, January 16 at 02:30am

An alleged ex-Wagner PMC commanding officer of the notorious mercenary organisation recently managed to flee into Norway. The soldier told his dramatic sequence of events in a live mobile phone video posted on the YouTube channel of Gulagu.net.

Revealed as Andrei Medvedev, he said that he slipped through a hole in the barbed wire fence near the town of Nikel in the Murmansk district of Russia. This allegedly occurred at around 2am on Friday, January 13.

Reaching the frozen waters of the Pasvik River that separates the two countries, he ran across at a point where it is just a few hundred metres wide.

“I turned around and I saw people with flashlights at a distance of about 150 meters, running in my direction. I ran along the forest. I heard two shots, bullets whizzed by. I broke the phone and threw it into the forest, and then ran on the ice towards the light of some houses”, he related.

The ex-mercenary explained: “They released the dog, but apparently it got tangled up somewhere in a wire in a snowdrift. They themselves were probably afraid to run after me – the ice was thin, and when I ran, it even squeezed through”.

After knocking on the door of one of the private houses he had spotted in the Skroytnes area of Kirkenes, Medvedev asked the homeowners for help. He quickly found himself confronted by the police and Norwegian military border guards who promptly detained him. He was subsequently transferred on an aeroplane to Oslo.

It is reported by Gulagu.net that Medvedev is prepared to testify against Wagner PMC boss Yevgeny Prigozhin. This is the first known instance of any high-ranking commander of the mercenary organisation defecting to European soil and is quite a coup for the West if he is really who he claims to be.

The fighter claimed that after his four-month contract with Wagner expired, he left the mercenary group and decided to flee to Europe. Prigozhin is known to control his army with an iron fist and deserters are dealt with in a most grotesque manner.

A video circulating on social media last November showed the execution of a Wagner fighter who attempted to defect to Ukraine. He was subsequently seen in the footage having his skull smashed with a sledgehammer.

This is the way that Prigozhin allegedly handles anybody who tried to defect. He even commented sarcastically about the contents of the video in one message. He also had a violin case containing a bloodied sledgehammer delivered to the European Parliament.

The boss has also been linked to statements ordering that anybody refusing to fight should be shot by his own men. Should a criminal case ever be opened against the Wagner chief then Medmedev’s testimony could make him a very valuable witness, as reported by thebarentsobserver.com.

___________________________________________________________

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Do remember to come back and check The Euro Weekly News website for all your up-to-date local and international news stories and remember, you can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.