Wagner mercenary who crossed the US-Mexico border was honored in Russia weeks before his arrest

A self-confessed veteran of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, arrested for crossing the Mexico-US border, was honored as a veteran weeks earlier by an organization created by Russian President Valdimir Putin, it has found RFE/RL.

Timur Praliev, 31, was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents on Jan. 4 near the border town of Roma, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande River into the United States and told agents that He was a citizen of Kazakhstan, according to U.S. federal court records. .

During a Jan. 7 appearance before a federal judge in McAllen, Texas, a federal prosecutor said Praliev was in possession of Russian and Kazakh passports, cash and a drone he carried in his bag on his back, a local television channel reported.

Praliev also admitted to being a member of Wagner, the channel's website, Valley Central, said, citing Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda McColgan.

Wagner fought in the Russian ranks in the Kremlin's all-out war against Ukraine and elsewhere around the world. The paramilitary group has been designated a “transnational criminal organization” by the US Treasury Department.

U.S. court records show that former Wagner mercenary Timur Praliev was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol on January 4 after entering the United States illegally by crossing the Rio Grande River.

After pleading guilty to illegal entry into the United States, Praliev was convicted and sentenced to prison. It is unclear where he is currently.

Online documents reviewed by RFE/RL show that less than a month before his arrest, a man of the same name was honored at an event hosted by an official government veterans' organization in Russia's Bashkortostan region.

An account of the event of December 12, 2024 was published on Russian social networks by the Bashkortostan branch of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation. The group was created by Putin in April 2023 to support veterans of Russia's war against Ukraine.

Attempts to reach the foundation for comment were unsuccessful.

Photographs from the event show a man identified as Timur Praliev receiving his veteran's certificate. The post identified Timur Praliev shown in the photo as a former Wagner employee with ties to Iglinsky, a municipality east of the regional capital Ufa.

Interviewed outside his home in Almaty, Praliev's father, Galymjan Nakybekov, told RFE/RL's Kazakh service that he had poor relations with his son and had lost contact with him after the death of his mother. Praliev ten years ago.

Nakybekov said that Praliev took the surname of his mother, who had relatives in one of the villages of Bashkortostan. Showing a photo of Praliev being honored at the December 12 event in the Russian region, Nakybekov said the man looked like his son.

Nakybekov also confirmed his son's birth month and year, November 1993. U.S. court records list Praliev's birth year as 1993.

RFE/RL also spotted the profile of a user named Timur Praliev on the Russian social networking site VKontakte, whose birth month and year were November 1993.

A Kazakhstan-based acquaintance of Praliev confirmed to RFE/RL that the VKontakte account was that of the man featured being honored at the event. An RFE/RL request sent by direct message to the account went unanswered.

Nakybekov told RFE/RL's Kazakh service that he was unaware of his son's detention in the United States but hoped he would stay there.

“I would like him to stay in the United States. Because if he came here, he would be arrested. If he was there, I would go too. And what is there here? poverty ?” he said, pointing to the dilapidated dormitory in Almaty's western suburbs where his apartment is located.

During Praliev's court appearance, McColgan said the U.S. government was concerned about [the] community safety when this defendant is released due to his affiliation with Wagner, a group associated with political violence, Valley Central cited the prosecutor as saying.

A U.S. magistrate judge ordered that Praliev remain in federal custody, Valley Central said.

Neither the U.S. Attorney's Office for South Texas nor the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol regional office that oversees that section of the U.S.-Mexico border immediately responded to emails or voicemails from RFE/RL requesting more details.

Portraits of Yevgeny Prigozhin (L), leader of the Wagner mercenary group, and Dmitry Utkin, commander of the group, are seen at a makeshift memorial in Nizhny Novgorod, August 27, 2023.

Founded by St. Petersburg leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, close to the Kremlin, Wagner became one of Russia's most notorious private military companies. Its soldiers have been deployed to Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and most recently Ukraine, where Wagner's fighters played a key role in capturing the town of Bakhmut.

In August 2023, two months after staging a brief but serious coup attempt, Prigozhin died in a mysterious plane crash north of Moscow. U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe Prigozhin was assassinated.

With reports from RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir and Kazakh services

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