Former Wagner fighter says Kremlin behind mercenary group

A former mercenary in eastern Ukraine and Syria, Alexander Zlodeyev spent years with the now infamous Wagner group, which he believes was nurtured from the beginning by the Russian government.

“I was there at the moment this organisation was created,” Zlodeyev, 53, tells AFP at a centre for newly-arrived asylum seekers in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport.

Slim, with light-coloured eyes and short grey hair, the former mercenary joined Wagner between 2014 and 2015, at the beginning of the grinding conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region between pro-Moscow separatists and troops loyal to Kyiv.

He says he was one of the organisers of the annual “Russian March” bringing together political extremists from the far-right to die-hard monarchists, although AFP was not able to verify this or other claims Zlodeyev made.

“We got information that Russian people were being killed for speaking Russian in Donbas, in the Lugansk region,” he adds.

“So we went to defend the Russians. We were spotted when we got there and invited to join up with Wagner.”

Zlodeyev insists that he himself did not participate directly in the fighting.

“I worked at the headquarters in front of a computer, in an office working to administer the troops,” he says.

– ‘Very nice uniforms’ –

Wagner’s men have been active in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Mali in recent years.

Critics see it as a shadow force controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin, used to promote Russian interests abroad by providing front-line fighters, trainers and advisors.

The UN, Western governments and aid groups have accused it of atrocities against civilians.

Kremlin-linked businessman Yegeny Prigozhin in September acknowledged founding Wagner in 2014, calling its personnel “pillars of our motherland”.

But the Russian government has always denied any ties to paramilitary groups.

“The organisation was created by the defence ministry… the GRU (military intelligence agency) gave responsibility for Wagner to Prigozhin to take care of,” Zlodeyev said.

Before then, “there was no organisation that could resolve certain problems by military means outside Russian territory,” he adds.

In its early days, Wagner was staffed by “trained people who knew what they were doing. Professional soldiers, some who had fought in Chechnya, former officers at the defence ministry,” Zlodeyev recalls.

“We got all the military uniforms direct from special warehouses of the GRU. We got very nice uniforms” as well as salaries paid in cash by the intelligence body, he added.

Months later, Zlodyev was sent to Syria, where Wagner took heavy losses as it fought alongside the regular Russian army against the Islamic State group.

– ‘Too many losses’ –

Zlodeyev claims he was in regular contact with Prigozhin himself from his perch in Wagner’s headquarters.

“I spoke to him by phone in Syria, when Palmyra was captured the first time. There were heavy losses. He called. We had to be on top of this kind of information minute-by-minute, second-by-second,” he remembers.

At the time, there were signs of rising tensions between Prigozhin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as the two competed for influence.

“When Wagner liberated Palmyra for the first time and Putin sang its praises, Shoigu wasn’t too happy, and the frictions began after that,” Zlodeyev says.

“Supplies became very poor and we started getting a lot fewer weapons.”

Zlodeyev claims that because “I was saying all the time that we were taking too many losses… that filtered up to the high command at HQ, and I was fired.”

His lawyer in France, where he arrived on October 12 seeking asylum, says Zlodeyev left Wagner around 2017 and sought ought the circle around Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner now serving a harsh jail sentence.

Saying he is now “against the war” in Ukraine, Zlodeyev claims he posted against Moscow’s February invasion of its neighbour on Russian social networks — to little effect.

“Inside Russia, I can’t fight the way I ought to, that’s why I decided to leave,” he says.

Already granted political asylum in France once before, in 2003, before returning to Russia in 2010, Zlodeyev says he has three French children.