12 December 2024

Prosecuting Putin’s Proxies: How Prosecutions Are Reshaping the Fight Against Russian Irregular Forces

Candace Rondeaux

The grainy video showed a man in civilian clothes being escorted through Helsinki Airport by Finnish security officers. To the casual observer, it might have seemed like just another security check. But the arrest in July 2023 of Jan Petrovsky, a commander of the notorious Russian paramilitary unit DShRG Rusich, represents something far more significant: the emergence of criminal prosecution as a powerful weapon against Russian irregular warfare operations. Now nearly two years on, Petrovsky, a Russian citizen, is now potentially facing years in prison for war crimes charges in a historic trial set to unfold in the Finnish capital in the coming months.

The prosecution of Jan Petrovsky in Finland marks a watershed moment in the pursuit of justice for Russian paramilitary atrocities in Ukraine. As a commander of the St. Petersburg- based Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group (DShRG) Rusich, a Wagner-affiliated unit, Petrovsky faces atrocity allegations connected to a brutal 2014 ambush of Ukrainian forces near Metallist in the Donbas region. What sets this case apart is its temporal scope – reaching back to alleged war crimes that predate Russia’s 2022 invasion, making it unique among Wagner-related prosecutions.

Announcement of the charges against Petrovsky in late October 2024, who also once held Norwegian citizenship, captured headlines in Finland and other parts of Scandinavia. Petrovsky is by no means the first Wagner Group linked operative to face formal war crimes charges–that distinction belongs to three others charged in Ukraine early after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022–but he is by far one of the most prominent paramilitary leaders to be detained.

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