Andrei Medvedev, of all people, a former commander of the Wagner mercenary group accused of serious war crimes in Ukraine, could contribute to their investigation.

Norway's national criminal police service Kripos announced on Tuesday afternoon that they are in contact with Medvedev.

Medvedev has the status of a witness and will be heard soon.

Kripos participates in the international investigation into war crimes in Ukraine at the International Criminal Court.

Julian Staib

Political correspondent for northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Medvedev was arrested early Friday morning by the Norwegian authorities near the Russian town of Nikel in the Murmansk region for illegally crossing the border and had applied for asylum.

According to his lawyer, he is now in a safe place in the Oslo area.

According to his own statements, his escape was dramatic: he was followed by border police officers with dogs and shot at.

"I heard two shots, bullets whizzed by," Medvedev told France-based Russian human rights activist Vladimir Ossechkin in a video posted on YouTube.

He escaped to Norway via the thin ice of the border river, which he crushed with his feet.

Says he has execution videos

According to his own statements, Medvedev commanded an assault squad from the “Wagner” group.

This consisted mainly of conscripted prisoners and was involved in the fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Medvedev told the New York Times newspaper.

He said he was present at several executions, including of mercenaries who refused to fight.

He also stated that the mercenary Yevgeny Nushin served in his unit.

The latter had gone into Ukrainian captivity last September, but fell into the hands of "Wagner" after an exchange in November and was killed with a sledgehammer as a "traitor" in front of the camera.

The recruits in his unit were reassigned every week due to the high losses, Medvedev told the Russian Internet portal "The Insider".

"We were a suicide squad," he added.

Medvedev claimed to be in possession of a video showing executions.

This will be published if something happens to him.

According to his own statements, he deserted in November and then hid in various places in Russia until he fled to Norway.

Even then he gave interviews to Russian and international media.

There is also a video that is said to show him handing in his military identification tag on the grounds of the "Wagner" headquarters in St. Petersburg in November.

Some of his statements are contradictory.

He told the British newspaper The Guardian that he decided to flee in July after his contract had been extended several times without his consent.

Elsewhere he stated that he had only been in the service of the Wagner troupe since July.

According to the New York Times, he did not provide any evidence for several of his claims.

Regular military defector 'liquidated'

However, the process is unpleasant for the leader of the "Wagner" mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

In recent weeks he has tried to present his troops as particularly strong and successful in combat, boasting about the capture of the small town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine.

Now the 26-year-old Medvedev is the first "Wagner" commander who was able to defect to a Western country.

Prigozhin tried to ridicule the fugitive's statements and to harm him.

He said sarcastically that Medvedev had worked in a "Norwegian battalion" of mercenaries and was "very dangerous".

Russia's regular military is also taking action against renegades.

A soldier who had fled the war zone in Ukraine was shot dead in western Russia's Lipetsk region on Wednesday.

31-year-old Dmitry Perov left his unit last Friday and returned to Russia.

On Tuesday he visited his mother in the city of Voronezh, then traveled home to a village in the neighboring Lipetsk region, according to Telegram channel Mash.

A manhunt published on Telegram said Perov was armed with an automatic weapon with five magazines and hand grenades.

Special forces are said to have cordoned off the area in question and Perow is said to have resisted.

Citing the Lipetsk authorities, it was reported that Perov had been “liquidated”.

The young man did not want to fight, human rights activist Ossetchkin wrote on Facebook.

"He just wanted to go home."