Two Russians who returned home after fighting in Ukraine for the Kremlin- tied Wagner mercenary group have admitted to killing unarmed civilians and children to a French-based Russian human rights organization.
The two former unit commanders said they killed hundreds of civilians with orders coming from “above,” all the way from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner and confidante of Kremlin autocrat Vladimir Putin.
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The accounts of Azamat Uldarov, 43, and Aleksey Savichev, both of whom are former convicts whom Putin has pardoned, were given to Vladimir Osechkin, the head of Gulagu.net, a France-based human rights group.
Gulagu shared their interviews lasting for nearly 80 minutes on a video sharing platform during which they said that children as young as “five-year- olds and...pensioners” were killed as they secured and cleared urban areas in the Donetsk regional population centers of Soledar and Bakhmut.
"I executed the order with this hand, I killed the children,” said Uldarov. “You understand, by order.” he said, adding that Prigozhin had said: “Don’t spare anyone.”
“The fact that we... we were given the command to wipe out and destroy everyone. We went and killed everyone – women, men, pensioners and children, in particular small – five-year-olds.”
In one 9-story residential building, Uldarov carried out an order to “clear” a basement with some 300-400 civilians, including about 40 children.
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Savichev said he found it difficult to consider anyone older than 15 years “a peaceful civilian” and that he had shot 10 teenagers.
One of them also mentioned blowing up a pit with 50 wounded Ukrainian prisoners of war. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on its Facebook page that it has opened an inquiry into the confessions of the two former mercenaries.
In January, the US Treasury Department sanctioned the Wagner group as a “transnational criminal organization” and described Prigozhin as a “Putin crony."
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