A former Wagner mercenary claims to have been ordered to kill civilians in Ukraine
A former mercenary from the Wagner group has denounced having received orders to kill Ukrainian civilians, including teenagers, according to the Gulagu.net organization, which denounces abuses in Russian prisons. “They gave the order to shoot everyone over 15 years old. Between 20 and 24 people were shot, ten of them adolescents between the ages of 15 and 17,” said the former mercenary, identified as Azamat Uldarov, who was recruited by Wagner in prison.
The video of his conversation with the exiled founder of Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin, has been published on the YouTube channel of this NGO. Uldarov, pardoned by presidential decree in September 2022 and a participant in the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, has assured: “I fulfilled those orders with my own hands, I killed children.” “What we did when we entered Soledar and Bajmut was terrible. They gave us the order to annihilate everyone”, he stated.
The former Wagner member has indicated that the orders came from his immediate bosses and also from Wagner’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who “gave the order not to let anyone out.” “We arrived, we were 150 and they gave the order to clean the area by all means and organize the defense. And we would go and kill everyone. There were women, men, retirees and children, do you understand?” recalled the former mercenary, who would have given a coup de grace to a five-year-old girl.
Uldarov has indicated that the mercenaries followed Prigozhin’s instructions to the letter, who ordered “not to allow anyone to get out alive.” “We are all Slavs. I don’t understand why we have to kill each other. We are the same, we are human beings, I do not understand why we kill each other ”, he pointed out.
According to Osechkin, the former mercenary is in Russia and “is not under any pressure from the Ukrainian intelligence services, the CIA or other organizations.” The founder of Gulagu.net, who has posted a video with interviews with Uldarov and another former mercenary, named Alexei Savichev, has said on YouTube that the former was subjected to torture and rape while in prison. Osechkin stressed that these testimonies lay the foundations for opening criminal cases against Prigozhin and other Wagner bosses for “dozens of cruel murders and a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” (Eph)
