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Former Wagner commander: 'I am sorry'

STORY: This former commander of Russia's Wagner mercenary group fought in Ukraine

He says the brutality he witnessed there ultimately pushed him to defect and flee to Norway

[Andrei Medvedev, Former commander of Russia's Wagner mercenary group]

"Many consider me to be a scoundrel, a criminal, a murderer. First of all, repeatedly, and again, I would like to apologize, and although I don't know how it would be received, I want to say I’m sorry. I want to explain that I am not that person. Yes, I served in the Wagner. There are some moments that people don't like, that I joined them at all, but nobody is born smart."

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"With the arrival of convicts, they began to treat people like non-humans, everyone somehow changed, and they replaced the commanders. They stopped to see us as humans. As I said, they've been giving stupid orders. They were sending people with assault rifles against tanks. They stopped appreciate human life. In most cases, people were dedicated to the cult of self-preservation."

Medvedev says he wants to speak about his experiences in the war

so 'the perpetrators are punished' for their crimes in Ukraine

"I’ve decided to stand against it publicly, to help to ensure that perpetrators are punished in certain cases, and I will try to make my contribution, at least a small bit, to bring it to nought."

''The scariest thing? To realize that there are people who consider themselves to be your compatriots, and who could come and kill you in an instant, or on someone's orders. Your own people. That probably was the scariest thing".