Wagner Fighter Who Survived Ukraine War Shot Dead During Drunken Argument At Homecoming Party

A Wagner fighter who survived the war in Ukraine has died after being shot during his homecoming party, according to a report.

The man, identified only as Yury S., was celebrating his homecoming in a village in the Irkutsk region Wednesday evening when he was shot dead by an acquaintance with whom he had a drunken argument, per local reports, as translated via Google Translate.

It was not immediately clear what Yury and the acquaintance, identified only as Konstantin, argued about. It was also unclear whether the former Wagner mercenary died at the scene. Local reports, however, noted that Konstantin himself called the police after the shooting. He is now under investigation.

It is not the first time that reports of violence involving Wagner fighters were made. Earlier this week, a man reportedly wearing a military uniform with a Wagner patch was detained in Novosibirsk after raping two schoolgirls. The man, identified as 42-year-old Sergei Sh., had met with two girls from grades 4 and 5 and threatened to blow them up with a grenade. He later lured the girls behind a garage where he raped them, according to the Baza Telegram channel.

The report noted that Sergei had left the Wagner Group on May 19 after his contract ended when he returned home and abused the girls. Sergei has since been arrested and may face a sentence of between 15 and 20 years.

In March, 28-year-old Wagner fighter Ivan Rossomakhin was accused of murdering a resident in his native village in the Kirov region. Rossomakhin was convicted to spend over a decade behind bars in 2020 for murdering a woman who was trying to get him off her property. However, he was freed by the Wagner Group after being recruited to fight in the war in Ukraine, per The Guardian.

The United States, in December 2022, estimated that the Wagner group had about 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 40,000 convicts recruited from various penal colonies. Inmates who signed a contract with Wagner were promised pardons in return for serving six months in the war in Ukraine.