A former Russian colonel and former member of the Wagner paramilitary group who fought in Ukraine and has since defected has said he witnessed war crimes and child abductions, according to a POLITICO report.

Igor Shalikov, who says he served in the Russian military and the Wagner group for 25 years, arrived in the Netherlands on Monday to testify about alleged war crimes committed by Moscow during its war in Ukraine before the International Criminal Court ( ICC) based in The Hague, Dutch public broadcaster NPO1 reported.

“I witnessed atrocities against civilians,” the 60-year-old said during testimony, adding that he saw prisoners of war abused and executed and children abducted.

I have seen people from the secret services take a large number of children without parents across the border into Belarus,” Shalikov said.

Shalikov said those who committed these war crimes did so on the orders of the Russian Defense Ministry, but also on the direct orders of President Vladimir Putin’s office.

POLITICO was unable to independently verify these claims, but they are corroborated by numerous reports of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

In March, the ICC issued an international arrest warrant for Putin for forcibly transporting children to Russia following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Kiev and several of its Western allies are pushing for a tribunal to investigate Russia’s “crime of aggression” during the war.

Shalikov said he fled Russian forces after refusing orders to execute civilians and now wants to report what he saw to the ICC because he has “lost faith in the Russian cause.”

He said he was also in Ukraine when Kremlin forces invaded the eastern Donbass region in 2014, when he witnessed similar abuses, with “civilians being threatened and killed.”