Andrey Medvedev was arrested on Friday night in Pasvik in Finnmark, suspected of having entered Norway illegally from Russia through Pasvikdalen.
His lawyer, Jens Bernhard Herstad, confirms this to Dagbladet.
– According to the circumstances, he is fine, says lawyer Herstad, who does not wish to comment further on the case.
Finnmark Police District reported the arrest on Friday.
– The man has applied for asylum in Norway, said chief of staff in the Finnmark police district, Tarjei Sirma-Tellefsen.
The police have not wanted to release any further information about the man, beyond the fact that he is a foreign citizen.
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It was the human rights organization Gulagu.net who first reported that Medvedev, who a short time ago was in command of a unit of the infamous mercenary group Wagner, had entered Norway.
He is said to have contacted the organization in December, and asked for help to avoid a similar punishment as his subordinate, Yevgenij Nuzhin, who was brutally executed by his own people in November.
He is said to have left the group immediately after his four-month contract, signed on 6 July 2022, expired, and has since been on the run.
In an interview with the independent Russian online newspaper The Insider Medvedev claimed in mid-December to have his former employer after him.
– They work to make people disappear: They take people and kill them – either in secret or in full public view, as was the case with Nuzjin, he told the newspaper.
In an interview with Gulagu.net he states that he is willing to testify before the Norwegian authorities and in international criminal proceedings about what he has experienced and witnessed.
Among other things, he has claimed to know of and to have witnessed several executions of Wagner soldiers who have refused to take part in combat in Ukraine.
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Claims to have been shot at
The border crossing is said to have taken place on Thursday, near the Russian mining town of Nikel, which is 10 kilometers from the border with Norway.
The subsequent sequence of events matches the description given by the Finnmark police district, which states that the arrested man must have visited a private house in the border area and asked for help.
Medvedev also informs Gulagu.net that he did.
The police describe the arrest as undramatic.
In the interview, which was published early Sunday morning, Medvedev describes dramatic scenes on the other side of the border: He claims to have been shot at by Russian border guards while he was running towards the Norwegian border.
He further states that he has moved to Oslo, where he will now be in police custody.
Dagbladet has been in contact with communications director at UDI, Ingeborg Grimsmo, who refers the matter to the police. Operations manager in the Finnmark police district, Robin Fure, refers to the police’s immigration unit, as it has become an asylum case.
– I do not intend to comment on this, apart from the fact that we do not comment on individual cases, says Jo Arne Måna, the lawyer on duty in the police’s immigration unit, to Dagbladet.
