The “defector’s” information obtained from insiders would complement the evidence of war crimes committed by the Russians in Ukraine. This is also perhaps “an opportunity to take a peek at how Russia works in war”.
17:00•Updated 17:44
A Russian man seeking asylum in Norway has said that he was a mercenary and that he is ready to testify against the Russian Wagner mercenary company for war crimes committed in Ukraine. This is what the Norwegian media and the Russian website Gulaga.net, which defends human rights, say. A man who came to Norway illegally from Russia was arrested in Kirkkoniemi in Northern Norway on Friday.
The testimony of an individual mercenary would probably not be of great importance in itself, but as part of a larger whole it would have an effect in the investigation of war crimes. Eyewitnesses and their information are needed.
– Russia’s way of waging war is to openly commit crimes against humanity, and there is already a lot of evidence of them. If it is an insider’s information and a person, then as a rich person in the roka, this will enable us to find out more about which forces have been on the move where, says the professor of criminal law Kimmo Nuotio from the University of Helsinki.
– Such a witness can be useful in a trial. Russia’s way of waging war is openly criminal. Very serious war crimes are committed every day. There is already a lot of evidence of crimes and it is accumulating all the time. The information from the insiders complements these.
Eyewitnesses to war crimes are needed. But primarily now the intelligence authorities are certainly interested in his information about how warfare is organized in Russia, says the director of the Foreign Policy Institute Mika Aaltola.
– And how Wagner fits into that whole. This is now an opportunity to get a peek into how Russia currently works, says Aaltola.
The asylum case will be dealt with first
The Norwegian authorities are currently mapping Andrei Medvedev the self-introduced person’s story and interrogate him. First, it will be determined whether the man will be granted asylum or whether he will be returned to Russia.
– The Norwegian authorities now have to map out whether he is the target of persecution, but it sounds like he has some reason to try to get out of there, Nuotio estimates.
Medvedev says he fled for his life, and that Russian border officials fired two shots at him on the way to Norway.
He made it to the Norwegian side and was arrested by Norwegian border officials on Friday. Now the man has been transferred to Oslo and the matter is being investigated. The man tells Gulaga.net that he has a good time in the Norwegian preliminary investigation with showers and plasma televisions.
In an interview with the Russian site Gulaga.net, the man says that he might die a painful death in Russia. The man says that he served as a mercenary at Wagner in management positions from June to November, and that his contract as a mercenary was extended without his consent.
There are no known similar “defectors” or Russian ex-soldiers who have applied for asylum in Western countries in recent years.
– There are these from the Cold War. On the other hand, it tells about this now very tense and tense situation. A person may have managed to slip away from the Russian security authorities, Mika Aaltola, director of the Institute for Foreign Policy, thinks.
Asylum seekers cross the Russian border to Finland every year, and Nuotio and Aaltola do not consider it impossible that there would also be mercenaries and people who have escaped from the armed forces.