Darya Vasineeva, 15, was last seen by her parents on Tuesday afternoon, with her dad just hours later receiving a mysterious video of her daughter mentioning Russian mercenary group Wagner
A 15-year-old girl last seen inside a snow-covered cemetery has gone missing, with her father receiving a mysterious video just hours after she disappeared. Darya Vasineeva was apparently last seen by her devastated parents leaving their home in Achinsk, Russia on Tuesday afternoon (March 18).
According to Baza News in Russia, the teenager sent a video to her worried father just two hours later, with the clip showing the girl sitting on a tombstone inside a cemetery in floods of tears. Now, an urgent manhunt is underway to try find the schoolgirl, with authorities concentrating their efforts in the nearby Russian city of Krasnoyarsk.
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In the mysterious video, Darya is wearing grey pants and a cream coat and can be seen sniffing and crying throughout. The girl recorded what appears to be an apology video to members of the murderous private mercenary group known as Wagner.
Wagner, founded by the infamous Yevgeny Prigozhin who was a former chef of Vladimir Putin’s, is said to have thousands of fighters, with the group linked to dozens of horrific crimes inside Ukraine, including torturing and killing civilians. In the video Darya claims she “allowed herself to deceive” someone called “Uncle Yura, nicknamed Komar” out of 300,000 rubles under the pretext of wanting “bulletproof vests”.
According to the girl, someone called “Uncle Seryozha” was now coming for her to take her to the aforementioned Komar. Police have launched an investigation under Article 126 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – which is kidnapping of a minor.
It’s been reported that the girl was taken to the cemetery by a taxi driver. Footprints were visible around the grave she was sitting on, although the driver did not interact with the girl, who instead sat there with her headphones on while on her phone.
Investigators believe another case of a missing girl could be linked, with a similar video of a girl several months ago in the Russian city of Tomsk also mentioning “Uncle Yura”. Some news outlets in Russia have speculated that the group is not actually Wagner-related and that it could be “scammers”, although detectives are yet to confirm or deny this claim.
Prigozhin ran the Wagner Group until he died in a place crash in August 2023, months after he led a failed coup against Putin. At the time, Putin denounced the rebellion as “treason” and a “stab in the back” and vowed to avenge it. But the charges against Prigozhin were soon dropped.
Following the crash, masked men claiming to be part of the Wagner Group released a chilling video promising revenge. In the footage one man says: “There’s a lot of talk right now about what the Wagner Group will do. We can tell you one thing, we are getting started, get ready for us.”
It comes as US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke for about an hour on Wednesday, a day after the US leader spoke to Russian President Putin. In a social media post, Trump said the call was to “align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs”, as he seeks to bring about a ceasefire between the two countries.
“We are very much on track,” Trump added, saying he asked secretary of state Marco Rubio and national security adviser Michael Waltz to provide more details on the conversation in a forthcoming statement.
Trump spoke on Tuesday to Putin about a possible partial ceasefire. Putin agreed not to target energy infrastructure but refused to back a full 30-day ceasefire.
