1 August 2024

Igor Sergienko...came to fight in Ukraine as a Wagner Group mercenary back in 2014...[I]n 2022 returned to Ukraine, first as part of the private military company (PMC) Redut, and now as a platoon commander in the Sokol battalion.

Sokol is a volunteer battalion, but like most PMCs, it is part of the Russian armed forces (belongs to the 108th Guards Air Assault Regiment). Therefore, Sergienko’s salary comes from two sources: 200 thousand rubles a month under the contract is paid by the Ministry of Defense, and another 100 thousand — by the sponsor (“military–industrial complex company”, as it says in the advertisement).

“We first employ a person [in our company] the day before the contract [with the Ministry of Defense] is signed, and then we suspend the employment contract, and we have a reason to pay bonuses to our employee who went to the SMO [special military operation — it’s how Russian officials call the war]. Such a scheme,” said a recruiter...

In fact, it's not even a secret to their own people that mercenaries are employed by Deripaska’s company. They discuss it in chat rooms: for example, a Sokol volunteer with the call sign Kiev wrote that “Deripaska is organizing Sokol personnel into his PSCs [private security companies].”

IStories found a confirmation of this scheme...

Deripaska himself, as already mentioned, is under sanctions. But Rusal, whose managers are now recruiting mercenaries for the war with Ukraine, was exempted from sanctions after Deripaska reduced his stake in the company below controlling interest...

Rusal told IStories that the company has nothing to do with the activities of volunteer structures and knows nothing about the use of its phone numbers by outside organizations...

The family of Igor Kozhushko, a native of Yamal, did not know that he was going to Ukraine — he had already called them from the training center in Murmansk. That was on September 28 last year; already on November 4, a stranger wrote to his sister that Kozhushko had died in the war.

The family managed to find out that Kozhushko went to war together with Novatek employees...

Novatek treats mercenaries like Rusal...