PMC “Wagner” rents out offices in order to give money to the families of dead mercenaries

PMC “Wagner” rents offices all over Russia in order to issue cash payments to the families of dead prisoners and mercenaries. At the same time, relatives are asked not to put all the received money in the bank. This was reported by Sever.Realii with reference to the relatives of the deceased.

Journalists are aware of offices in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and at the base of PMC “Wagner” in the Krasnodar region. One of Sever.Realia’s interlocutors, who introduced herself as Alyona, said that after the funeral of her brother who died in Ukraine, she was invited to the Novosibirsk office. She was asked to show a burial certificate, asked to write a receipt, and was also filmed.

According to Alyona, she was given 660 thousand rubles of her brother’s salary for six months, 100 thousand rubles of “funeral” and five million rubles of compensation for the death of a relative. She was also awarded the “For Courage” medal, which has only symbolic value, as it is not accompanied by a certificate signed by the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. The document was promised to be handed over when the mercenaries of PMC “Wagner” are recognized as veterans of hostilities.

The employee of the private military company, which gave the money to Alyona, advised not to put it in a bank account. “Before leaving, they told us the instructions: don’t put money on the card, you can’t put money on the account either. You can put it in a bank box. Or put 100 thousand rubles each on the cards of different banks. That’s it. You go quietly with this money.” – she told Sever.Realia journalists.

The sister of the deceased also said that her brother was recruited into the PMC in the colony. In the first month of the war, an emu tore off a finger. However, she later learned from a colleague of Alyona’s brother that his finger and that of several other mercenaries had been amply chopped off by PMC representatives for drinking alcohol.

• Private military company “Wagner” is a Russian unofficial military unit that takes part in ground operations in Syria, Africa and in the war with Ukraine. Company fighters are accused of committing numerous war crimes, including extrajudicial executions.
• In the summer of last year, after several military defeats by the Russian army on the territory of Ukraine, PMC “Wagner” began to recruit prisoners into its ranks and send them to war. Convicts who agreed to take part in hostilities had to spend six months on the front line, they were forbidden to retreat and surrender under the threat of execution. Those who remained alive after six months were promised freedom. In this way, tens of thousands of fighters were recruited into the PMC.