The following is an extract from Never Say War, a new book from award-winning reporter and author  Åsne Seierstad, which follows the experience of Andrey Medvedev, a fighter in Russia’s Wagner Group as he rose through the ranks before escaping and seeking asylum in Norway.

They had to cross the field. When they got halfway across, they’d be visible from the substation. “Run as fast as you f**king can. The khokhols will shoot. Just keep running! Don’t panic. If your partner gets hit, drag him with you. Speed is key. This isn’t the time to be dawdling.”

Andrey pointed at the first group of four and commanded: “Run!” They ran. The next four ran. Then four more, and then Andrey with a man called Sibay and two others. 

Bang! Earth flew skywards. Another blast, then another. Andrey was thrown into the air before landing heavily and clinging to the ground, where he lay touching heads with Sibay. A rocket landed between two soldiers and tore them apart. Every shell was followed by another, and a hail of bullets.

“Get up!” he shouted. Lying down gave them no cover. “They have our square. For f**k’s sake, run! We’re in their sights!” Shouts came from all around. Screaming. The artillery attack seemed never-ending. 

Men bellowed and writhed; others lay still, dead or unconscious. One staggered around like a zombie, shooting wildly, until he took a bullet to the back. One of Andrey’s boys, nicknamed the Tower because he was so tall, had been shot in the shoulder and was spurting arterial blood. Another walked around howling, in shock after losing his fingers.

Those who were left dragged the wounded back and got them down into a trench. Andrey tore open a pack of bandages with his teeth and started stuffing them into the hole in the Tower’s shoulder, which was bleeding like a fountain.  Bandages, wet wipes, everything he could find were pressed into it. Blood spurted into his face. He felt dizzy, like his brain was shaken up, from the fall or the shockwaves.

The field doctor ran from one to the next injecting the most severely wounded with a strong opioid, easing their passing.

Lynx-7 called. “You must take the position!” “Impossible. There are four of us,” Andrey said. “Out of thirty?” “Yep! Did you know where you were sending us?” “Forward! That’s an order.” “Go to hell!” Andrey replied and hung up.

It was insubordination. He was covered in blood, his own and others’, and now his nose was bleeding, as it often did after close encounters with artillery shells.

Lynx-7 called again. “Take that forest! Shoot them, kill those b*****ds, tear them to pieces!” “Yeah, yeah…” He guzzled a bottle of water. “Understood!” “Surely they won’t shoot now there are so few of us?” Sibay asked in a small voice.

Andrey just stared at him, lost for words. Then he recovered. They ran across ground torn up by explosions. He noticed his foot was bleeding, the piece of shrapnel sticking out of his lower leg. He pulled it out.

It was a bleak and bitter victory. They were at the entrance to the Iron Forest, thirty metres from the Ukrainians, with seven or eight enemy soldiers lying dead next to them. They heaved them over the edge of the trench for fortification. They could hear snatches of the Ukrainians talking. The Ukrainians could probably hear them too.

Andrey’s team was out of ammunition. As was their enemy, he surmised. No one fired a shot. They just sat there. With a small patch of land between them. They dozed and kept watch in turns. Their heads hurt, from the explosions, the air pressure, the adrenalin. Andrey felt like his skull had been cracked open.

Their faces were caked in mud, their clothes bloodied. As long as they held out, they’d kill. All because a president had once decided that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. It got worse. New battles. Day of rest. Back to the front. Blood and more death.

In August, Andrey was wounded by shrapnel and was sent to the doctor. As he lay there, delirious, in the field hospital, he caught snatches of conversation. The losses were significant along the entire front. They needed more men. Yevgeny Prigozhin was recruiting from the prisons. The best soldier was one nobody would miss.

He offered these men a clean slate. If they died in action, they would be laid to rest as heroes at Wagner’s expense. Surviving family would receive five million roubles – almost £50,000. The pardon came with a price: six months of front-line service.

Those who changed their minds after signing would be considered deserters and executed. That autumn, Wagner assembled battalions of convicts – tens of thousands of men. Most were violent criminals, in prison for murder or rape. Only those doing time for paedophilia or terrorism couldn’t be recruited. 

A few received a couple of weeks’ training, others were loaded onto transport planes and flown straight to the Ukrainian border. Most were sent to the Bakhmut front.

The turnover in Andrey’s unit was high. There was a lot of muscle and little competence. Andrey might have thirty men in his command, but only ten who could fight. When he gave the order “Forward!” some tripped and fell or hid behind trees. 

When fired on, they froze. Andrey often didn’t manage to learn their names before they were killed. He tried to impress on them that cooperation was key. “We’re like a car … If a part is missing or broken, the car stops.”

But the convicts didn’t listen and were often dreadful shots. Andrey’s unit, which used to mine their bases of operation, had to stop after several were triggered. “Don’t ever go over there!” wasn’t warning enough.

The team leaders didn’t trust the convicts, meaning preparations worsened because some information could only be provided just before the attack. Many of their weapons were defective, Soviet crap that didn’t detonate. They opened boxes to find that the grenades had rusted, or carried projectiles that didn’t fly. 

As Wagner advanced, they revelled in the spoils of war, brand-new American rifles, ballistic helmets and bulletproof vests. They tore equipment from the fallen without shame. Andrey spotted a Ukrainian soldier with a pair of night-vision goggles strapped to his helmet and shouted to the others, “If anyone shoots him in the head, I’ll throttle you. They’re mine!” 

One time, Andrey was searching a dead soldier for anything of value and saw that the man had something clenched in his fist: a picture of a young woman. Wounded, dying, killed. Every day someone would have his skull smashed in or be blown in two. The Ukrainians got detection machines that could find the Russians’ rocket launchers and destroy them. They became experts in drone warfare. The platoon commander sent Andrey into one skirmish with six men against three tanks.

Wagner no longer had an air of the elite about it. Now only the dregs enlisted. One hopeless case was Kusok, the Piece or the Bite, a thin, scarred man with bad teeth who had done time in a prison camp in Ryazan for murder. During his first incursion, he ran off without his gun. “Where the hell is your weapon?” Andrey bellowed. The Piece shrugged. “I forgot it.”

Andrey was sent to the base at Malibu, an old sanitarium, to receive training in new weapon systems that had fallen into Wagner’s possession. They were European. Brand new. He met the boss. Prigozhin bragged to the team leaders that a penal battalion had gathered on the outskirts of Bakhmut and a demining team had been dispatched. It was now just a matter of strolling in and picking off the last of the resistance. 

Andrey knew that was far from the truth. The Ukrainians were entrenched in the ground and had barricaded themselves inside the city’s apartment buildings. “Bakhmut will soon be ours,” Prigozhin continued. “At what cost?” Andrey mumbled.

“What did you say?” Andrey repeated the question. “What’s your number?” Prigozhin asked. He was summoned to the Manor. The Lord of the Manor punched him, hard. He felt his cheekbone crunch. How he hated these men. He wanted out.

Nevertheless, the trip to Malibu saved him from a worse punishment. The Piece had defected. He’d been sent to get more ammunition and had gone over to the Ukrainians. If it had happened under Andrey’s command, he would have been held accountable.

Soon after, the Piece appeared on Ukrainian television. He’d let himself be recruited to get out of prison, he said. He’d always planned to desert. The Ukrainians showed no mercy. They kept him locked up until the next prisoner exchange. For the Piece, this meant certain death. He was chained to a stone wall and made to put his head against it. Footage shared on social media showed an executioner finishing him off with two blows to the head from a sledgehammer.

“A dog’s death for a dog,” Prigozhin said. The sledgehammer became Wagner’s symbol. When the European Parliament debated labelling Wagner a terrorist organisation, they were sent a sledgehammer smeared with blood. Another critic received a sledgehammer in a violin case.

For Andrey, everything was unravelling. He argued, provoked, fought, drank. The platoon commander promised disciplinary action. But they neither cut off his little finger nor shot him in the head. They needed him. Meat for the grinder. Cannon fodder. Experienced killer. Could he run away? If they caught you, it was over.

Never Say War is published by Virago and is available from booksellers now.