Dmitry Kiselev’s program showed an interview with a man who calls himself the driver of the journalists killed in the CAR

Dmitry Kiselev’s “News of the Week” program featured an interview with a man who is called the driver of journalists Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguev and Kirill Radchenko, who died in the Central African Republic.

The story states that this man's name is Benvenu Douvokama and he is hiding from persecution by "some white people."

The man speaks French, and his words are translated into Russian by a voiceover. The hero of the story says that initially the journalists hired him to take them to Bambari, but in the city of Sibut they unexpectedly changed the route and went north. According to him, when it got dark, they did not want to let them through the checkpoint, and the Russians passed it only by showing the military fake UN IDs.

“We drove 20-25 kilometers. Rain is coming. Suddenly two people in civilian clothes with their faces uncovered came out onto the road. We stopped. And then more people came out from both sides of the road, armed, wearing turbans, and forced us out of the car,” the man said, noting that the attackers were in Muslim clothing and spoke Arabic.

The voice-over clarifies that Jemal began to swear at the people around them in Arabic, and then tried to push one of them away, after which “shooting started.”

“Two of my employers were lying on the ground. One, who was big, tried to fight back and fought. It was in the rain. I started moving towards the car, no one noticed. <...> I jumped into the car, that’s how I saved myself,” the hero of the interview said.

The story also showed the base that, according to VGTRK employees, the dead journalists tried to film. The “senior instructor of the training camp” says that the Russians are working in the CAR “under a contract to train fighters” and are in no way connected with the Wagner PMC.

Later, the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) research group noted that the “10 Commandments of a Soldier” included in the plot were printed on a sheet with an image of the Wagner PMC award.

In January, the Dossier Center published an investigation according to which the driver, Benvenu Douvokama, is a former employee and agent of the gendarmerie, who was in constant contact with the current employee of this structure, Emmanuel Cotofio. He, in turn, was in touch with Russian Alexander Sotov, whom investigators associate with St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin.

In addition, after the murder of the Russians, it turned out that they were introduced to the consultant-fixer Martin by an employee of the Federal News Agency (FAN) Kirill Romanovsky. This agency is also associated with Prigozhin.

Dzhemal, Rastorguev and Radchenko were killed in the Central African Republic on July 30, when they were preparing a film about the work of the Wagner PMC, which is associated with Prigozhin’s structures.

Updated at 5:10 p.m. The news has been supplemented with a comment from CIT.