Wagner mercenary jailed for 16 years for killing comrades during rebellion

A court in Russia’s western Voronezh region sentenced a former Wagner Group mercenary to 16 years in prison on Thursday for the murder of two fellow soldiers during the group’s failed rebellion in June 2023, state-affiliated local news agency RIA Voronezh reported.

According to the investigation, Yaroslav Shekhovtsov, who headed the notorious Wagner Group’s medical service, killed two of his fellow mercenaries on 24 June 2023 as mutinying Wagner units advanced towards Moscow. The bodies of Shekhovtsov’s victims were discovered two weeks later by the side of the main road from Voronezh to Luhansk.

Shekhovtsov told the court that he and two of his comrades had been attempting to reach the nearest population centre to surrender when he began to fear for his life after he overheard one of his comrades say to the other, “We need to finish off the chief, he’ll turn us in,” independent Telegram news channel 7x7 Horizontal Russia reported.

One of Shekhovtsov’s victims was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage, a medal recognising selfless acts, and his family was given a death certificate indicating that he had died “heroically in combat”. However, upon discovering the true circumstances of his death, his mother and brother filed a civil lawsuit against Shekhovtsov and were each awarded 750,000 rubles (€7,750) in compensation. The relatives of Shekhovtsov’s second victim did not file a claim.

Shekhovtsov pleaded partially guilty to the charges, though indicated during his trial that he planned to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence to earn an early release from prison in order to return to fight in Ukraine.

Following the Wagner Group’s failed mutiny in June 2023, led by the group’s co-founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, about 10,000 mercenaries were relocated to Belarus, while those who remained in Russia were permitted to return to the front line if they agreed to sign a contract with the Defence Ministry.

On Thursday it was reported that Wagner fighters were being deployed to Russia’s southwestern Kursk region to bolster the Russian military’s response to an ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory.