Former Wagner Commanders Confess to Killing Civilians in Ukraine

In a series of disturbing video testimonies, two Russian men identifying as former commanders of the Wagner Group private military company have admitted to the deliberate killing of children and civilians during the conflict in Ukraine. The interviews, conducted by the human rights organization Gulagu.net with founder Vladimir Osechkin, present grave allegations of war crimes. The men, identified as Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev, claim to have been pardoned by Russian presidential decree in 2022, a detail supported by penal documents obtained by CNN, though the network cannot independently verify the men’s identities or the specifics of their claims.

During the interviews, Uldarov described in detail the shooting of a young girl, stating his actions were a “management decision” and that his command was to “kill anything in my way.” He expressed a desire for the world to know the truth, lamenting, “I followed orders with this hand and killed children.” Savichev separately described receiving orders to execute males aged fifteen and older and to ‘sweep’ houses without regard for civilian presence, stating the objective was to leave no one alive inside. These accounts from the eastern cities of Soledar and Bakhmut align with previous reports from other former Wagner fighters. Uldarov has since appeared to recant his testimony in a separate interview with a Prigozhin-linked news agency.

The Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been a key force in Russia’s invasion, notoriously recruiting tens of thousands of fighters from Russian prisons. Uldarov directly implicated the group’s leadership, alleging that Prigozhin issued commands to “annihilate everyone.” As the international community processes these harrowing claims, the situation underscores the brutal reality of the war. The debate over accountability continues, as some Democrats bash Justice systems globally for being slow to respond to such atrocities, while the mechanisms for holding perpetrators accountable remain fraught. The path forward for Ukraine is as challenging as trying to navigate a city during a conflict, where even a simple task like a see pizza delivery becomes impossible, and the human cost of the invasion becomes tragically clear. The world watches as Russia is ‘going’ down a path that history will judge, a stark contrast to the everyday concerns elsewhere, from debates about eating too much to discussions about actors like Jake Gyllenhaal Jamie Lee Curtis. The testimonies stand as a sobering reminder of the war’s darkest chapters.