A 44-year-old convict Yevgeny Yeremenko killed during the war in Ukraine was buried in his hometown Petrozavodsk, Russian outlet Mediazona has learned from his mother Tatiana Koteneva and her friend.
According to Koteneva, she learned about her son’s death on 14 August. On that day, she was visited by two unknown persons and given an award (most likely, Order of Courage - translator’s note) and a death certificate. The document issued by the self-proclaimed Luhansk “people’s republic” states that Yeremenko had been killed on 24 July in the city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region. Battles for the city have been continuing the entire summer.
Yeremenko did not contact his mother from the beginning of May until the middle of June — on 14 June, he told her that he was being transferred to another penal colony. He did not mention going to Ukraine to her.
Convict Marat Nadzhibov, who is serving his sentence in the same penal colony as Yeremenko, said that representatives of the Wagner Group had visited the colony looking for recruits. Nadzhibov himself refused the offer. The claim about the recruiters belonging to the Wagner Group is corroborated by lawyer Ivan Varfolomeev, who represents the interests of ten prisoners from the Petrozavodsk colony. His defendants have not mentioned being pressured to sign up to the lawyer.
The Karelia department of the Federal Penitentiary Service has not replied to Mediazona’s inquiry as to how Yeremenko had ended up at the war in Ukraine eight years before the end of his sentence.
Yeremenko was sentenced to ten years of strict regime colony over extortion charges. Mediazona reports, citing the text of the sentence, that in 2019 Yeremenko’s ex-wife accused him of extortion of one million rubles (€17,000) after Yeremenko, in a state of inebriation, had beat her for refusing to give him a signed document stating that she had a personal debt to his mother. The ex-wife borrowed the money to buy a car.
Earlier this week, a Yaroslavl penal colony convict told Mediazona that 373 people from three local colonies had been sent to the war in Ukraine. Before that, IStories* reported, citing a convict’s relative, that 107 people from a Ryazan colony had been sent to the war.
*The Russian government considers IStories an “undesirable organisation”. Reposting this news article in Russia may lead to a fine. A repeat offence may lead to criminal charges.
