A former Wagner Group commander who fled to Norway in January in hopes of seeking asylum has been arrested on suspicion of trying to cross the border into Russia, his lawyer says.
The reported arrest of former mercenary Andrei Medvedev comes after he was sentenced in April to 14 days in jail for disorderly conduct and carrying an air gun in a public place for his alleged role in a bar brawl in the Norwegian capital of Oslo in February.
However, his Norwegian lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, told Reuters on Saturday that his client’s latest detention was a misunderstanding.
“He was up there to see if he could find the place where he passed [into Norway in January]. He was stopped when he was in a taxi. They were never near the border. . . . It was never his intention to cross the border [into Russia]Risnes said.
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Former Wagner boss Andrei Medvedev is pictured in court with his lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, in Oslo, Norway, in April. (Gorm Kallestad/NTB/Reuters)
When Medvedev first entered Norway through the country’s Arctic border with Russia, he claimed he was seeking asylum because he feared for his life after witnessing the killing and treatment of Russian prisoners in Ukraine, according to Reuters.
But months later, Medvedev said in a YouTube video that he wanted to return to his homeland despite the dangers, the news agency added.
During the trial earlier this year, the court acquitted Medvedev of committing violence against police officers during his arrest in the bar fight.
He admitted to resisting arrest and spitting when he was handcuffed, but denied kicking the officers, Risness said during the proceedings, according to the Associated Press.
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A portrait of Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in August in a plane crash two months after the start of his brief rebellion, rests on flowers at the grave at Porokhovskoye Cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
“It’s very good that he was acquitted of the most serious,” Risnes later told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet after the verdict.
Medvedev said he had agreed to join the Wagner Group from July to November 2022, but left after his contract was extended without his consent. He said he was willing to testify about any war crimes he saw, although he denied participating in any.
Norwegian police said in a statement later on Friday that they had arrested a 20-year-old man for trying to illegally cross the border with Russia, but did not identify him, Reuters reports.
A view shows a flag of the private mercenary group Wagner at the site of the plane crash that killed Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Tver region of Russia on September 1, 2023. (Reuters)
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Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in Russia last month.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
