Igor Salikov, a former colonel of the Russian Defense Ministry's military intelligence service (GRU) and later a senior instructor of PMC "Wagner" and one of the commanders of PMC "Redut", has decided to testify about Russian war crimes in Ukraine at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, SIA refers to Deutsche Welle's report.
According to him, he witnessed crimes committed by the Russian army, in particular "false flag operations" in Donbas, "atrocities against civilians", torture and execution of prisoners of war, kidnapping of children who were "transported across the border to Belarus".
He claims that he fought in Syria and Africa as part of the Wagner Group, and he was in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014, including being the head of the 4th Special Operations Department of the “DPR Prosecutor General’s Office.” In 2022, Salikov took part in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, during which he commanded a unit of the Redut PMC.
The former Russian military officer said he left Russia with his family in June 2022. Now he flew from Cape Town (South Africa) to the Netherlands, where he intends to seek political asylum.
On December 10, Salikov wrote a confession addressed to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan and ICC President Piotr Hofmański, which he submitted through the Gulagu.net project.
The founder of the human rights project, Vladimir Osechkin, claims that he registered the document within the ICC system in Amsterdam.
At the same time, Osechkin appealed to the leadership of the ICC with a request for the protection of Salikov, who, since the summer of 2023, had been remotely testifying to prosecutors of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and was awaiting questioning by ICC investigators.
“Salikov does not count on immunity from criminal prosecution by the ICC and is ready to answer for complicity in aggression against Ukraine,” Osechkin said. Over the past six months, the former GRU colonel wrote the book “No War!” about the events of 2014–2015 and 2022. He is now writing a second book “Wagner: The Kremlin's Army”, to contribute to ending the war.
Bütün xəbərlər Facebook səhifəmizdə
.jpg)
.jpg)
USD
EUR
GBP
RUB