to the attention of police over nine alleged incidents. turning to the war in ukraine now and a former commander with the russian paramilitary wagner group has claimed asylum in norway after deserting from the mercenary organisation. andrey medvedev who s 26 crossed the border into norway last friday, where he was detained by border guards. stephanie prenticejoins me now from our newsroom in london. she has been covering the story for us. in the first instance, reminders what the wagner group do? , . . , do? they are an independent paramilitary do? they are an independent paramilitary organisation. - do? they are an independent l paramilitary organisation. they are closely tied to the russian state and work alongside them in a number of territories. we
leaving. leaving? like running away? yes, running away. what else? five [ bleep ] days under pouring rain with no sleep. that s deserting. watch out. if they don t let us leave in december, we ll go away, too. you just can t imagine. we live in a swamp. everything is leaking. we have no sleep, no food, nothing. no sleep, no food, nothing. time is certainly not on putin s side. and as we speak tonight, his forces are locked in a deadly battle in the eastern ukrainian city of bakhmut. and in this video, i m going to show you, you ll see a russian truck carrying weapons. it gets decimated by a ukrainian strike. that s the explosion that you see on the screen right now. and inside bakhmut where the fiercest fighting is taking place, just listen. you can hear nonstop blasts, explosions lighting up the sky. and as i mentioned, cnn is
regaining of this town to ukraine? that is significant because of the operational meaning. it has interconnection and is a good position for pushing back rusher, as well as in the donetsk and luhansk region. it has some routes which are important for transportation and logistics, but it is also important from the point of view that your correspondence just mentioned, that yesterday there was an annexation of this territory, and only a day later, a defeat, so that is quite remarkable for ukrainians, and we continue to defend our territories. there are some reports of russian troops who were fighting their deserting. i don t know if you are hearing about that, but if confirmed, what would that tell us about the russian war efforts, and has significant would it be, do you think you micro you has significant would it be, do you think you micro think you micro you mean inside
have direct flights out of russia. significant, as well, as you noted, the level of repression it seems we have not seen since the start of the war when russian crackdowns on protest happened. this news from obd info, people in at least four police stations in moscow are being handed prescription papers when they are arrested at these protests, drafted into the war. one person, according to this group, threatened with prosecution for refusing the draft. russia is in the process of tightening the law around this, changing its criminal code under the conditions of mobilization, they can sentence people to 15 years in prison for refusing the draft, or deserting. there is, now, a sense of panic in moscow, coupled with the climate of fear the kremlin has intensified throughout this war, and that is where we get these scenes on the streets. still relatively small numbers. right. claire, what more are you learning about the new
and we know that there are people that are deserting from the russian military. the bottom line is vladimir putin has to get as many bodies as he can to ukraine as fast as possible. this is about a mobilization drill. he s going to go through 11 time zones in russia to get as many people as he can to the front. the original number was 300,000. he ll try to get 50 to 100,000 there in the next few weeks. if he doesn t do that then ukraine has real opportunity to overrun certain areas that russia has been holding for the past six and seven years. that is the key right now, is people to the front. but doesn t adding people who oppose this war to the fighting force guarantee sabotage, guarantee defections? you know, russia doesn t look at it that way. they look at it as power. they look at it as destruction. they just look at it as even forcing the situation there on the front lines. they don t have the same level of emotional intelligence about what we would have about our military. su