Andrey Medvedev entered the Nordic country via the border near the village of Nikel in Russia’s northern Murmansk region, by Pasvikdalen, which straddles both countries, independent Russian language news outlet The Insider reported, citing human rights advocate Vladimir Osechkin.
Medvedev “illegally” crossed into Norway on Thursday, January 12, amid “the barking of guard dogs and facing shots in the back from the border service of the FSB,” Osechkin wrote on the Gulagu.net website, which campaigns against corruption and torture.
Gulagu.net uploaded a video onto YouTube on Sunday in which a man it said was Medvedev described his crossing into Norway next to a map graphic of the border region between Russia and Norway.
He said that he started his escape in a bathrobe and climbed over two fences before running through a forest.
“I just ran, ran, ran but I didn’t look behind me,” he said, describing how he heard the barking of a dog he thought had been released and shots being fired. Once he had crossed the border, he knocked on the door of a house and asked a woman to contact the police.
Norwegian media reported that Medvedev had been arrested by Norway’s border patrol. “He applied for asylum in Norway,” Tarjei Sirma-Tellefsen, the Finnmark police chief, said in a statement, Norwegian outlet NRK reported.
Osechkin said he had been taken to an immigration center in Oslo, where “the procedure for political asylum and international protection begins.”
Osechkin said that Medvedev had been the commander of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a mercenary whose brutal execution for joining Ukraine’s troops was posted online by channels believed to be linked to Wagner, which is fighting alongside Russian troops.
Medvedev had earlier told the Insider that he had personally attended the executions of mercenaries in the private military company who had refused to participate in hostilities.
Medvedev is apparently prepared to speak out against the Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin. Osechkin has said this would be the first time since the war started in Ukraine that a former Wagner commander had agreed to testify against Prigozhin, “who was involved in the murders of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.”
Prigozhin’s fighters have been heavily involved in the fight for the Donetsk town of Soledar and the city around nine miles to its south, Bakhmut, which has been the scene of a fierce months-long battle.
In a statement to Newsweek, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) said it “can confirm that the person has applied for asylum in Norway. Due to safety and privacy UDI cannot make any further comments.”
Newsweek contacted Gulagu.net for comment.
Update 01/17/23, 8:30 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with a respone from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration.
