Former Wagner Group fighter goes to court to prove he’s alive after Buryatia war memorial lists him among dead

A memorial to Russian fighters killed in the war in Ukraine that was installed in the Buryatian village of Selenginsk this summer contains the name of a man who was mistakenly declared dead by the Russian authorities, the outlet Takie Dela reported on Wednesday.

The unnamed man was reportedly injured in Ukraine in May while fighting as part of Wagner Group. After being discharged from the hospital, he learned from his family that he had officially been recorded as both dead and buried, and that a memorial to twelve dead soldiers in Selenginsk that opened in July had his name engraved on it.

To annul his death certificate, the man had to go to court, where a judge heard testimonies from his sisters and a witness and compared his fingerprints to the ones in the Russian Interior Ministry’s database before ruling that he was indeed who he said he was.

The local news site Sibirsky Ekspress noted that out of the 15 names of the Selenginsk soldiers’ memorial, six of them match those of people with past felony convictions for theft, drug-related crimes, and robbery.