On Saturday, the police of Norway arrested an ex-commander of the Wagner mercenary group, Andrei Medvedev, on doubt that he attempted to illegally cross the Russian border after seeking asylum in Norway earlier this year, the man’s lawyer said.
Andrei Medvedev, who fled Russia in January through its Arctic border with Norway, has defined escaping as Russian guards fired shots at him. He has talked about his time battling in Ukraine as part of the Wagner group.
In a statement late on Friday, Police said that a man in his 20s had been taken into custody for trying to illegally cross the border back into Russia, but did not name him. An officer with the Finnmark local police refused to provide the captured man’s identity.
Crossing the Russian border is only permitted at specified points.
But Medvedev’s detention was due to a misconception, his Norwegian lawyer Brynjulf Risnes told Reuters.
Risnes said, “He was up there to see if he could find the place where he crossed (into Norway in January). He was stopped when he was in a taxi. He was never near the border… It was never his intention to cross the border (into Russia).”
At the moment of his arrival in Norway, Medvedev said he was seeking asylum because he worried for his life after detecting the killing and inequity of Russian convicts carried to the frontline in Ukraine.
Medvedev’s escape in January caused headlines around the world as a rare specimen at the time of someone defecting to a Western nation while claiming to have battled for Russia as a mercenary in the Ukraine war.
He said in May in a video posted on YouTube he wanted to return to Russia even though he thought this could pose a threat to his life, describing himself as “some kind of a boy in a big game” that he no longer wanted to be part of.
