Three criminal leaders recruited to Wagner PMC killed in Ukraine

Bellingcat reported the information.

According to the investigative group, one of the killed criminals is Andrey Berezhnykh. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2013 for murders and other offenses committed during his leadership of a gang in the Saratov region from 1994 to 2011. He was also tried for the attempted murder of 10 people.

Information is being spread online that Berezhnykh was killed on December 8, 2022, a month after he was recruited by Wagner. In honor of the criminal's death, a service was held at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Balakovo on Eastern Orthodox Christmas Day.

Another Russian criminal mastermind, Sergei Maksimenko, was killed in the war in Ukraine in December 2022. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for being the leader of the Olympia criminal group, which was involved in pimping, extortion, and murder during the 1990s and 2000s.

According to Bellingcat, Igor Kusk, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, was also killed at the frontline after joining Russian forces. He created his criminal group in Tatarstan in 1998. His ranks included a large number of veterans like him.

The gang was initially involved in low-profile contract killings, but later it attacked 2 CEOs of the Tatsantekhmontazh construction company. The company began to cooperate with the group, and these murders were linked to the directors’ attempts to "disentangle themselves" from the group.

• In late August, it was reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin was recruiting new Wagner mercenaries in the colonies.

• In January, Russian human rights activists reported that 50,000 prisoners had already joined Wagner PMC. Recently, however, Prigozhin has been denied access to prisons; the Russian Defense Ministry now hires convicts directly.