Former Wagner PMC mercenary Andrei Medvedev, who requested political asylum in Norway, was detained in Grense-Jakobselv, a Norwegian town on the border with Russia. This was reported by The Barents Observer.
In a conversation with the publication, the provincial police Finnmarkreported that the detainee wanted to leave Norway for Russia and therefore tried to cross the border illegally. They plan to charge him with violating border rules. “The arrest was not dramatic,” added Martin Marum, operations manager of the Finnmark police station, speaking to The Barents Observer.
Medvedev's lawyer Brynjolf Risnes, in a conversation with Reuters, denied that his client planned to return to Russia. “He [Medvedev] was there to see if he could find the place where he crossed the border [to Norway in January]. He was stopped while he was in a taxi. He was never near the border… He never intended to cross the border [with Russia],” the lawyer explained. According to Risnes, the police detained Medvedev “due to a misunderstanding.”
Olesya Krivtsova, a defendant in the case of justifying terrorism and “discrediting” the army from the Arkhangelsk region, who escaped from Russia and lives in Norway, also spoke in her Telegram channel , who met Medvedev not so long ago — a former mercenary asked to be taken to the border with Russia.
Back in May, Medvedev announced his plans to withdraw from the procedure for obtaining political asylum in Norway and return to his homeland. He also conveyed this information to the founder of Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin.
“There are a lot of strange things going on. I feel like some kind of boy in some big game of big guys. I don't want to testify against anyone. I hoped that my life would work out here [in Norway], that I would get away from all this politics of war and the army, but somehow it doesn’t work out. Let's see how it goes in Russia. They'll kill you — okay. They won't kill you — thank you. If they let me live, thank you even more,” Medvedev said then in a video, which he later deleted from his YouTube channel.
Medvedev, who grew up in an orphanage in the Tomsk region, signed a four-month contract with Wagner PMC in July 2022 and was a unit commander there. According to him, after the end of his sentence they refused to let him go and “put him in a hole,” from where he fled to Russian territory.
In January 2023, it became known that the former mercenary was able to escape to Norway — there he requested political asylum. Medvedev told journalists from Norwegian TV 2 that he crossed the Titovka checkpoint in the Murmansk region using someone else’s passport, and then crossed the ice of the Pasvik River to the other side while border guards were pursuing him.
In Norway, a former mercenary said that Wagner PMC had a special unit that was responsible for the execution of refuseniks, deserters and captured Ukrainians. Medvedev claimed that prisoner Yevgeny Nuzhin also fought under his command, who, after returning from captivity, was executed in front of the camera by smashing his head with a sledgehammer.
Later, Medvedev was detained by police several times — for example, in Oslo, a criminal case was opened against him due to a fight at a bar and a clash with a policeman during the arrest. As a result, at the end of April, the court acquitted him of charges of assaulting a policeman, while assigning him 14 days of probation for cases of hooliganism and carrying a traumatic pistol in a public place.
In April, Medvedev was detained in Sweden, where he had gone buy inexpensive cigarettes and “travel a little.” While his case of seeking political asylum was being considered, the man had no right to leave Norway.
On September 19, a message appeared on the Gulagu.net telegram channel that the former mercenary was beaten and robbed at the railway station in Oslo. According to Medvedev, violence was used against him by “train station security officers, natives of Poland and Afghanistan, who hurled insults at him due to the fact that he was Russian.”
Updated in 14:30. Added comment from lawyer Brynjulf Risnes.