Wagner Veteran 'Visits Own Grave' After Mistaken KIA Report

A former Wagner Group fighter who was mistakenly declared killed in action while fighting in Ukraine has visited his own grave back home in Russia, while his family received payments for his "death."

Sergei K., 44, an ex-convict from Buryatia, one of Russia's ethnic minority republics that borders Mongolia, was recruited to fight with the Wagner mercenary group and was wounded on the front lines in Ukraine in April, Russian news outlet MK.ru reported.

According to military analysts from the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), the majority of people were drafted from Russia's republics, including Dagestan in the Caucasus, Yakutia in northeastern Siberia, Buryatia, and the Krasnoyarsk territory in Siberia after Russian President Vladimir Putin's partial mobilization order was announced in September 2022.

Tens of thousands of former convicts were also recruited by the Wagner Group, which has now been absorbed by the Russian Defense Ministry following an uprising led by its late chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigozhin spearheaded a recruitment drive for Putin's war in Ukraine, hiring in penal colonies in Russia and offering male prisoners commuted sentences and cash incentives in return for six months of military service. Prigozhin was killed in a private jet crash in August.

In December 2022, Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist who has interviewed former members of the Wagner Group, told Newsweek that as many as 30,000 prisoners had been recruited from jail and deployed to Ukraine.

While Sergei was undergoing treatment in hospital, his family was mistakenly informed that he had been killed in Ukraine's Luhansk region. A coffin was brought home and his family was given a death certificate.

Sergei's lawyer, Andrei Kibirev, said the Wagner fighter hadn't contacted his relatives while hospitalized, saying that he didn't want to "disturb them."

In July, he called one of his sisters, who "fell into a state of shock," Kibirev said. The sister told Sergei that they had "buried him" 40 days ago.

His family had also been paid almost 6 million rubles (around $64,000) in compensation for his "death," according to the attorney.

According to his lawyer, Sergei "is trying to treat the situation with humor."

"He recently visited his grave, he says that he did not expect that he would be buried so well," Kibirev said.

On October 19, Sergei's record of death was annulled after the Kabansky District Court of the Republic of Buryatia spoke to his family and found his fingerprints matched those stored in a government database.

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