Confession of a former Wagner mercenary: “I shot a girl in the head”

The horror of the actions that Wagner’s group committed, and continues to commit, on Ukrainian territory is almost always heard from the mouths of its survivors. Very rarely, at least publicly, do their perpetrators talk shamelessly about these crimes. Azmat Uldarov and Aleksei Savichev, two former mercenaries from a terrifying private army fattening their ranks in Russian prisons, have now done just that.

And they did not spare any details about what, according to what can be concluded from their story, were war crimes committed in the area of ​​Bajmut and Soledar, in the east of the country. “I killed children with my hands,” says the first. We had orders to shoot everyone over the age of fifteen, without a word., says his old partner in the bloodthirsty militia. His chilling confessions in separate video interviews – totaling more than an hour – came to light this week gulagu.neta Russian portal dedicated to the defense of human rights based in France.

The pictures are not of good quality: a mobile phone screen with a close-up of the interlocutor. Each separately answers the questions of Vladimir Osechkin, exile and founder of Gulagu.net, who can be seen in a small frame in the corner of the phone. Savičev appears on the street, outdoors, under a bare tree. Uldarov speaks from a wallpapered room where he lights a cigarette. “She’s screaming, she’s a little girl, you know, she’s five, maybe six years old. I shot him, a fatal bullet to the head.”this ex-combatant describes one of the murders committed in Bakhmut.

Between the fingers that pulled the trigger, he holds a cigarette. “They gave us the order not to let anyone out, to carry out a purge, to liquidate everyone who gets in the way”, he continues, aware that in their attacks they took the lives of “men, women, children, old people”. The order came “from above”.

“Prigozhin – Evgeny – said ‘not to let anyone out’. No one, I emphasize, no one,” he openly points to the Russian oligarch who belongs to Wagner’s group, which recruited thousands of mercenaries in Russian prisons. Many members of this paramilitary group, like Uldarov himself, 43, received a pardon signed by President Vladimir Putin despite the crimes on his record.

Another one of those that he himself told in the interview happened a little over a month ago, on March 18, in the center of Bakhmut, where he admitted that he “cleaned” a nine-story building where he found “about 300 or 400 civilians.” including dozens of children. Many tried to protect themselves in the large basement.

Orders “from above”

Uldarov claims that he is making these confessions now so that they are known “in Russia and other nations”, although the published facts – which he himself describes as “terrible” – have not yet been verified.. His colleague in the ranks Aleksey Savichev gives more details about some of these actions, such as the firing squad just a few months ago with more than twenty killed. “Ukrainians”, qualifies the ex-fighter and ex-convict when the interrogator asks him how many civilians were among them. “You say it like that, civilians, because you say it wrong. 15- or 16-year-old Ukrainians would not say they are civilians,” he claims, before noting that the platoon they were shooting at would have had “some 23 or 24” people over that age.

Among his victims, he claims, there are numerous soldiers, not only from the occupied country, but also Russians who refused to fight. and that they died in the well into which he threw grenades. Actions, he agrees, corresponded to orders “from above”.

The owner of the Wagner Group, which a few days ago proposed ending the military operation in Ukraine and concentrating on the defense of the already occupied territories, denied every word of these two militiamen. “No one shoots at civilians or children, no one needs that. We went there to save them from the regime they were under.”, defends Prigožin in a statement in which he tries to erase every trace of guilt on his person. However, this is not the first time that one of its militiamen shows the reality of the practice of this private army.

In January, former commander Andrei Medvedev, who managed to escape to Norway, said he had seen extrajudicial executions in the Russian invasion during the four months of his contract with the paramilitary forces and was willing to testify.