Siberian Court Sentences Ex-Wagner Fighters to Prison for Revealing Military Atrocities in Activist Interview

A court in Siberia has sentenced two former members of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group to five and a half years in prison for disseminating false information about the war, based on an interview with an activist advocating for the rights of ex-prisoners.

Maxim Zelenov and Alexei Chernyavsky were reportedly recruited from a penal institution in the Irkutsk region of Siberia in November 2022, just days after President Vladimir Putin granted them pardons and cleared their criminal records, as stated by court officials.

The two men allegedly deserted their training camp on January 1, 2023, and subsequently took up residence in Luhansk, an area in eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.

Later that same year, they reached out to Vladimir Osechkin, the exiled leader of the prisoners’ rights organization Gulagu.net, claiming that Wagner commanders had instructed fighters to murder civilians amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

«There were grandmothers and grandfathers. We probably killed around 40 individuals in a five-story building,» Zelenov mentioned in a September 2023 interview.

According to court officials, Osechkin offered assistance to Zelenov and Chernyavsky in seeking political asylum abroad and provided them with 50,000 rubles (approximately $580) for the interview.

The Minusinsky City Court in the Krasnoyarsk region found the two men guilty of disseminating “intentionally misleading information” about the Russian armed forces.

“The actions of Zelenov and Chernyavsky deceived numerous individuals and created an illusion of unlawful actions by the Russian Armed Forces, thereby undermining its credibility within society,” the court stated.

Moreover, the court mandated that Zelenov undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment for an unspecified condition.

In the wake of Russia’s extensive invasion of Ukraine, Osechkin himself was charged with spreading “false war information” and justifying terrorism, with Russian authorities designating him as a “foreign agent.”

Osechkin’s credibility suffered a blow after the investigative news organization Proekt reported in 2023 that he was profiting from aiding Russians in their pursuit of asylum abroad and maintaining connections with high-ranking officials in the Russian security apparatus.