Former commander of a Wagner PMC unit Andrey Medvedev was placed in an immigration detention centre in Trandum, Norway, Nrk.no reports.
Andrey Medvedev. Screenshot: Dagbladet.no
According to the channel, Medvedev was detained under Norway’s immigration law. The authorities are currently deliberating whether to place him in custody, the police immigration service told NRK.
Medvedev said that someone helped him “cross the Norwegian-Russian border in Pasvikdalen”, but he did not specify what kind of help he received.
Medvedev’s attorney Brynjulf Risnes has confirmed that his client was arrested on Sunday evening. Previously, the former PMC Wagner commander was in a “secret location” in Oslo.
The police questioned Medvedev regarding his service in the private military company. The authorities refused to provide a comment to NRK on this matter.
On 15 January, a Russian national illegally entered Norway and was detained near the locality of Skrøytnes in the Paskvidalen valley near the Russian border, NRK reported. The channel also wrote, citing Russian media and Telegram channels, that the Russian citizen might be a PMC Wagner mercenary.
Founder of Gulagu.net, a Russian anti-torture human rights organisation, Vladimir Osechkin stated that the man in question was Andrey Medvedev, who was the commander of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a mercenary whose brutal execution for switching sides and joining Ukraine’s troops was shot on video and posted online by channels believed to be controlled by PMC Wagner in November.
Andrey Medvedev appeared in the media earlier when he gave an interview to The Insider where he talked about more executions of mercenaries who refused to take part in combat. He stated that the MED group, a separate unit within the Wagner PMC’s security service, is tasked with executions.
“They’re in the business of making people disappear: they take guys and [kill them] either publicly or non-publicly, as was the case with Nuzhin,” he said.
According to Osechkin, Medvedev contacted Gulagu.net on his own accord after his interview with The Insider, as he feared revenge from PMC Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin.
It is reported that the former mercenary had crossed the Norwegian border on 12 January. Barents Observer reported this on the same day.
