Vladimir spoke about this in a conversation with Yulia Latynina.
On October 12, 2022, ex-Wagnerite Alexander Zlodeev flew to France and requested political asylum and international protection. The French law enforcement agencies did not immediately let the Wagnerian in, explaining this as a danger to their own country. Vladimir Osechkin, together with French lawyers, proved to the court that Alexander Zlodeev cooperated while still on the territory of Russia, and that he handed over to justice all the audio and video materials he had, testimonies, etc. In addition to the fact that Zlodeev was in the intelligence of PMC Wagner, he also worked for several years at the headquarters of the PMC and personally received phone calls from the "first". The call sign "first" belongs directly to Yevgeny Prigozhin.
"We first learned about distribution. How cynically the Russian special services and the Russian security forces organized sabotage and created local conflicts on the territory of Donbas.
We now know that the FSB supervised the Donetsk region. And the Lugansk region was supervised by the GRU. And accordingly, those fighters of the united illegal military formation, which later became known as PMC Wagner, came to the territory of the Lugansk region.
For example, we did not understand for a long time when Prigozhin began to recruit prisoners, we wondered why they were doing it. And the truth turned out to be the following. Those who, starting from 2014-2015, were part of the so-called PMC Wagner and travelled as a mercenary to Syria and other countries of the world on a professional basis, most of the professional mercenaries with extensive combat experience, refused to go to Ukraine. Someone for moral reasons, because it is meanness and it is obvious to everyone that there are no Nazis. Someone, and by the way, little is said about this, that over the past 7-8 years before the attack, there were a lot of mercenaries from Ukraine in Wagner PMC.
And in same Syria, when there were battles for Palmyra, when it was about an attempt to seize an oil refinery, there were not only Russians among the Wagner PMCs, there were also Ukrainians. And those who fought together with the Ukrainians and were friends refused to take part in this.
Plus, whether we like it or not, but Ukraine and Russia are connected by a million family ties. Someone has a grandmother from near Kyiv. Someone has uncles and aunts from Vinnytsia, someone is from Kharkiv himself, and this is a big story. And a huge number of people, professionals, refused to go to Ukraine.
In addition, even those who came to Ukraine in the first 2-3 months, when they saw what was happening there, many began to return and refuse to continue the contract."
