“Citizens brutally executed”: Wagner mercenary talks about crimes in The Hague

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On December 18, flight KL598 flew from Cape Town to Amsterdam. On board: former Wagner mercenary Igor Salikov (60) on his way to The Hague to testify before the International Court of Justice about Russian war crimes.

Salikov was in Ukraine from 2014 to 2015. In 2017 he was one of the interns of the Wagner Group. Under the leadership of ex-Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin (1961-2023), he fought in Syria and several African countries. In 2022, he commanded a unit of the Redut private army in Ukraine – alongside Wagner, one of the best-known mercenaries operating under the cover of the Ministry of Defense.

In total, Salikov was a soldier for 25 years before fleeing. He is the first commander-in-chief to testify before the International Court of Justice on a voluntary basis. His confessions reveal the cruelty with which the soldiers acted. He has now given an interview to the Dutch program EenVandaag.

“None of it was true”

In 2014 he went to Donetsk for the forced ‘people’s referendum’. On May 11, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic declared its independence from the rest of Ukraine. But even Russia did not recognize this independence at the time.

“I supported the ‘separatists’ there and witnessed the well-thought-out propaganda campaign,” he says. “We have unwittingly become participants in a coup d’état carried out by Russia in Ukraine.”

On May 27, 2014, heavy fighting broke out at Donetsk airport between the Ukrainian army, separatists and Russian volunteers. “The Russian presidential government issued a secret order to escalate the situation. This made for a bloody battle.” A second major attack on the airport in September killed between 200 and 800 people.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (71) has repeatedly claimed since 2014 that the Russian language is being banned and that Russians are being tortured in the Donbass. The aim of the war was “the liberation of the people from Ukrainian nationalists”. Salikov believed in it. “But after two years I realized that none of that was true.”

Russia is said to have kidnapped 6,000 Ukrainian children

“I saw secret service people taking a large number of parentless children across the border into Belarus,” the ex-mercenary said. “Whole convoys of FSB agents arrived in cars and vans.” There is an international arrest warrant for child abduction against Putin and Russian children’s rights representative Maria Lwowa-Bielova. Research by Yale University shows that 6,000 children have been taken to Russia for ‘re-education’.

CH Media has a copy of Salikov’s letter to Karim Ahmad Khan (53), chief prosecutor of the International Court of Justice. In it he describes how Prigozhin and Wagner founder Dmitri Utkin (1970-2023) built a system of retaliatory terror. Civilians were “tortured and brutally executed” by Russian mercenaries. They were “torn apart alive or run over by tanks.”

The Hague confirms Salikov’s help

In 2022, Salikov witnessed the use of cluster munitions in Kiev. “There were bodies everywhere with their limbs torn off,” he recalled in the letter. “I saw a dog dragging not a doll but half the body of a child.” Salikov claims that at one point he refused to kill innocent civilians and was therefore court-martialed in Russia. However, he managed to escape. With the support of the Dutch authorities, he could now enter the Netherlands.

Prosecutor Yuri Belousov confirmed to Reuters news agency that Salikov was in contact with Dutch authorities. He writes: “He has made important statements about the attack on February 24, 2022, some of which have already been confirmed. He has reported on war crimes that we are investigating, some of which have already been confirmed.” Salikow is applying for political asylum in the Netherlands.

Source: Blick