The Russian man accused of sexual abuse towards two young girls in the city of Novosibirsk used to be a PMC Wagner mercenary, founder of the organisation Yevgeny Prigozhin confirms, as per media outlet NGS.
According to Prigozhin, he warned the convicts he recruited in penal colonies that if they were to break Wagner’s rules (the ban on desertion, rape, and looting), then he would “take them to his” to make them pay for their crimes in accordance with wartime justice.
“Wartime justice is strict. Unfortunately, we can’t recruit this man, to let him die a hero, again. The recruitment is over,” Prigozhin told journalists. “This is not the example of that classic mercenary — the ones we used to have, when PMC Wagner had mercenaries with a high level of morale. I recruited out of [the men] I had available [this time],” he added.
On 23 May, a Novosibirsk court arrested the suspect for two months. Telegram channel Baza previously reported that the man under arrest was 42-year-old Sergey S. who used to fight for PMC Wagner. According to the Telegram channel, the man’s contract recently expired and he ended up coming to Novosibirsk.
According to NGS, a local woman called the police saying that her 12-year-old niece told her that a man had raped her 10-year-old friend.
“A man in camouflage brought two girls into a garage. He threatened them saying that he had a gun and a grenade, and were they to start screaming, he would blow them up; then he ‘committed depraved acts’ against them,” NGS reports.
At the end of March, Prigozhin said that over 5,000 convicts had received pardon after finishing their “contracts” with the PMC. He claimed that the percentage of individuals to commit new crimes within a month of being released was 0,31%. “This is 10-20 times lower than the standard indicators before the special military operation,” he added.
