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'We don’t even know if he’s still in one piece' After Russian prisoner joins Wagner Group to follow conscripted twin to Ukraine, one brother dead and other missing — Meduza [1]

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Date: 2022-12-19  

Stanislav Krasilnikov / TASS

In September, a Russian prisoner named Alexey who had just a few months of his sentence left to serve decided to sign a contract with the Wagner private military company (PMC) after learning that his twin brother, Konstantin, had been drafted to fight in Ukraine. Now, Konstantin is dead, and the twins' family is desperately lobbying the Wagner Group to return Alexey, who they haven't heard from since early November — but their pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears.

In September 2022, a 24-year-old resident of Russia’s Sverdlovsk region named Konstantin was drafted into the Russian army; soon after, he was sent to Ukraine. Konstantin’s twin brother, Alexey, who was serving a prison sentence in the city of Nizhny Tagil, decided to join the Wagner PMC and deploy to Ukraine after learning of his brother’s conscription, according to the Yekaterinburg-based news outlet E1.ru.

“Alexey was slated to be released from the penal colony in December, but when he learned that Konstantin had been mobilized, he joined the PMC. He said, ‘Since my brother’s there, I’ll go, too.’ By the time we learned about it, he was already on his way to the special military operation,” the men’s sister, Alyona, told journalists.

According to Alyona, Konstantin stopped responding to her calls in October — less than a month after he was called up. Worried, the family reached out to their local military commissariat. They didn’t receive a response until December, when they were sent Konstantin’s death certificate. According to the document, Konstantin was killed on October 30 in Ukraine’s Luhansk region.

Konstantin was buried on December 16. On the day before his funeral, the family contacted Wagner PMC and requested that Alexey be allowed to travel home to attend his twin’s funeral. The request was denied.

“Right now, we’re unable to find anything information about Alexey. He has no means of communication, and Wagner isn’t telling us anything — we don’t even know if he’s still in one piece. We were told, ‘We can’t help you; he’s already started working. When his service is over, he’ll come home.’ He last called us himself in early November. We can’t lose him, too,” said Alyona.

The family is still lobbying for Alexey’s return. At their request, local authorities in their city contacted the All-Russia People's Front, a pro-Putin organization, and asked its representatives to relay the family’s appeal to the Wagner Group. “The guy is the family’s last [son] left. Purely out of human decency, of course, he needs to be returned, [or] there will be nothing left of this family,” said local official Sergey Tokarev.

According to E1.ru, the Wagner Group has already refused to send Alexey home, citing the fact that his “unit is on a combat mission, and there might not be any communication with him for up to two weeks.”

Regrets of a Wagner recruit In new interview, Russian POW and former Wagner fighter recounts recruitment process and pleads not to be swapped

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[1] Url: https://www.meduza.io/en/feature/2022/12/19/we-don-t-even-know-if-he-s-still-in-one-piece

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