“We had to wipe out villages”: ex-Wagner mercenary talks about Prigozchin’s orders

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The Wagner mercenaries will stop at nothing for their mission. The descriptions of a runaway soldier show how cruel the orders they carry out are. In an interview with the human rights organization “Gulagu.Net” (in German: No to the Gulag), Maxim Zelenov tells us that he and his comrades also killed women and children. The Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigoshin († 62) personally gave the orders.

Zelenov was convicted of murder in 2018 and went to prison. The war in Ukraine would be his ticket to freedom. In November 2022, 500 prisoners went with Prigozhin from the Irkutsk prison camps to Ukraine to train and fight for the war. Those who did not adhere to this did not survive the training. “They shot people in front of me with a machine gun right in the back of the head,” reports Selenow. That should be a lesson to the other combatants: kill or be killed. The civilian population of Ukraine fell victim to the cruel Wagner methods.

“One grenade through the window, two through the door – and if anyone survives, take them out,” Zelenov describes Prigozhin’s orders. This was also the case when they passed a residential building near Soledar. “I killed a lot of people when we wiped out entire villages,” Selenow says. “Probably at least forty,” he continues. The Battle of Soledar in January was particularly bad. “Grandmothers, grandfathers, women, children – we killed all civilians,” he continues. The shocking details of the Wagner Group’s combat tactics demonstrate once again the brutal cost at which the mercenaries won victories on Ukrainian soil.

Wagner-Söldner fled and hid

A little later, the city of Soledar fell and a few weeks later the Russians also captured the hard-fought city of Bakhmut. Selenow describes how he killed a woman (35) and her daughter (7) ‘because he had to’. But after that he fled from the ranks of the Wagner group. He remained in hiding for eight months – until Prigozhin died. In the program of “Gulagu.Net” he broke the silence about the atrocities of the Wagner mercenaries.

How the Wagner group will continue is unclear. On June 24, 2023, on Prigozhin’s orders, the armed mercenaries drove towards Moscow – threatening the Russian government. Two months later, the Wagner boss was killed in a plane crash. As the opposition portal Vashniye Istoriye reports, many of the mercenaries are currently on leave. “Wait or find a new way to make money,” says the current representative of Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg office. Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu tries to get the former mercenaries under his wing. One thing is clear: many are willing to continue killing. (jwg)

Source: Blick