"You see? I hold a cigarette in my hand. With this hand I fulfilled the order to kill children. You understand? By order". He was in Soledar, a town occupied by the Russians in January, and in Bakhmut last March. This is the confession of a former unit commander of the Wagner group who was given the order to "clean up." There were about 50 men who had to advance, occupy and defend the position, killing whoever got in their way. "We went and killed everyone. There were men, women, children, pensioners (...) She was running, a five or six-year-old girl. I shot her, do you understand? Control. She had an order not to let anyone out. They gave us an order to clean".
This statement is part of a long confession collected in an interview via videoconference by Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the French-based Russian portal for the defense of human rights Gulagu.net. This is Azamat Udarov, 43, an ex-convict, pardoned by presidential decree in August 2022 and enrolled in the Wagner group to fight in Ukraine. His is the testimony of a man devastated by what he did.
Another testimony, that of Alexei Savíchev, also a former prisoner, pardoned by President Putin's signature in September 2022, abounds in the same type of story. Less affected, among other horrors, he recounts the shooting murder of at least 10 adolescents, between the ages of 15 and 17. According to him, it was not possible to tell if they were civilians or combatants and they were killed "because of the tattoos they had."
Savíchev, also a unit leader simply because he was the oldest and because the men listened to him, massacred about 60 men, including wounded Ukrainian soldiers and Russian soldiers who refused to fight, stuck in a well into which they threw grenades.
Azamat Udarov also participated in another massacre, near the center of the city of Bakhmut on March 18. According to him, a nine-story building was seized in which there were "about 300 or 400 people" distributed between the ground floor, the first floor and a large basement. When asked by Vladimir Osechkin how many were children, Udarov replies "about 40".
Who gave the orders? For Udarov and Savichev it is clear: they came "from above". Udarov had a couple of commanders, but he affirms that the head of the Wagner group himself, Yevgueni Prigozhin, had given the order in a video message not to leave anyone, military, civilian or minor, alive.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office said in a Facebook post that an investigation has been opened into the confessions of both mercenaries, the Kyiv Post reported. The full interviews - more than 80 minutes - are accessible on the Gulagu.net YouTube channel, only in Russian.
