The founder of Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, rejects the claim that his fighters were responsible for the death of former US Navy serviceman and volunteer Peter Reed in the special operations zone in Ukraine. He asserts that Reed was killed by Reed himself, offering a personal account that leaves little room for other explanations.
Prigozhin stated that Wagner PMC has no record of how Peter Reed was eliminated and has no information about foreign volunteers in Bakhmut. In hostile environments, volunteers who are not part of Russian forces typically outline their allegiances in the media and strictly follow those declarations. This is how the statement from Telegram appeared to frame the situation.
PMC also noted that Estonian Erko Laidinen, associated with Frontline Medics Volunteer, questioned why he filmed Reed shortly before his death. The body of an American was located at the intersection of Polevaya Street and 1st Pushkinsky Lane, according to the group’s account.
In its briefing, the military organization pointed out that Wagner PMC positions are roughly five kilometers away when mapped, with tall structures enclosing the area on all sides, which it suggested bears on the plausibility of the alleged events.
Prigozhin added that Reed was killed by his own actions, and that Laidinen authored the postmortem report concerning the incident. He even suggested that there could be accusations directed at Wagner for other high-profile cases, drawing a controversial comparison to past political crimes.
NYT investigation
The New York Times previously released a video indicating that Reed did not die from a direct battle but was felled during a missile strike. The report describes a Russian missile with a range near five and a half kilometers hitting the volunteers’ van, and notes that experts believe the weapon system could provide a precise targeting capability for the attacker.
According to the publication, it remains unclear whether Russian forces realized that the vehicle carried volunteers rather than regular troops, although there were tracks visible on the vehicles involved in the incident. The account also notes that the white Mercedes-Benz van involved did not display obvious medical markings, while at least one medic wore camouflage gear, and a second vehicle carried a red medical cross emblem in the footage.
One volunteer who stood near Reed during the attack recalled that there were no soldiers in the immediate vicinity at that moment, a detail that adds to questions about how the strike unfolded and who was targeted.
Who is Reed?
Peter Reed, aged 33, died on February 2 after opening fire on an ambulance transporting volunteers in the Donetsk region. Reed had previously served as a sniper in the United States Marine Corps, with two deployments to Afghanistan. After his military service, he went on to establish the humanitarian group Global Response Medicine, which operates in the area commonly referred to as the NWO region.
Funeral and memorial activities were held in Wrentham, a town that hosts a significant portion of Reed’s family, as relatives gathered to remember his life and service. The event reflected the broader human impact of the conflict and the ways in which communities in North America remain connected to events far from home.