Wagner Mercenary Soldiers Charged with Murders in Russia and Georgia

At the end of March, an 85-year-old woman was found murdered in her own home in Novy Burets in the Kirov region, over 800 kilometers east of Moscow.

The murder happened just a few days after a 28-year-old man had returned home to the city. The man had fought in Ukraine for the infamous mercenary army the Wagner group, and was recruited from a prison where he was serving a murder sentence. He is now charged with murder.

On Monday this week, a 38-year-old man was stabbed to death in Tskhinvali in the Russian-controlled breakaway republic of South Ossetia in Georgia.

In this case too, the police have charged a Wagner soldier who fought in Ukraine, and has previously been convicted of murder.

Now the two local communities rage against Wagner’s recruitment from Russian prisons, and criticize the Kremlin for giving the mercenary army too wide powers, skriver The Guardian.

30,000 right

The Wagner Group is owned and run by the oligarch and Putin friend Yevgeny Prigozhin. For a long time, Prigozhin himself traveled to Russian prisons to recruit inmates.

The offer is a full pardon for almost all kinds of offences, in return for six months of service for the Wagner group in Ukraine.

Wife beaters, murderers and rapists and other violent criminals have accepted the offer in their thousands. Many of them have been regularly used as cannon fodder in some of the most brutal battles in eastern Ukraine.

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US authorities estimated in February that as many as 30,000 Wagner soldiers had been killed or seriously wounded in Ukraine since last year’s invasion.

As many as 90 per cent of the Wagner soldiers who were killed must have been convicted criminals, according to the United States.

But some also survive – and they return to Russia as free men.

– Putin and Prigozhin responsible

When the 28-year-old Wagner soldier returned home to Novy Burets in the Kirov region from Ukraine in March, many in the village reacted.

The 28-year-old was convicted of murder in 2020, and for a number of years before this had committed a number of major and minor offences.

In the village, his name was synonymous with trouble.

Therefore, several hundred of the village’s residents asked the local authorities to take action during a public meeting on March 28, which was broadcast on local television.

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– We don’t sleep at night, a resident told the TV channel, claiming that the convicted Wagner soldier walked around the village, drunk, with a pitchfork and an ax in his hands.

The local police chief promised to take action, but the next day, on March 29, the soldier entered the 85-year-old’s home and killed her with an axe.

– The authorities, and Putin and Prigozhin personally, are responsible for the death. They released a sick bastard, says one of the 85-year-old’s relatives to The Guardian.

– Everyone is in shock

Fewer details are known about the convicted Wagner soldier charged with the murder in Tskhinvali in South Ossetia.

South Ossetia is not formally part of Russia, but is in practice annexed from Georgia and controlled by Russia. Tskhinvali is the capital of the breakaway republic.

The murder victim, the 38-year-old man, was a well-known figure in the urban environment of Tskhinvali.

– For as long as I can remember, he has always been there, greeting cars into the city with his big smile. He was loved by everyone in our community. Everyone is in shock and wondering how this could happen, says Alik Puhati, a journalist from South Ossetia to The Guardian.

The Wagner boss Prigozhin himself has commented on this murder, and places the blame on the murder victim. Prigozhin claims that the accused Wagner soldier “defended passers-by who were being harassed”.

On a video, however, one can see how the Wagner soldier runs after the murder victim and hits and kicks him.

Former president of South Ossetia, Anatolyj Bibilov, has come out against Prigozhin’s statements.

– The victim was a kind, harmless person whom everyone, with few exceptions, loved as their own family, says Bibilov to The Guardian.