The Wagner group, the Russian private army, has posted a gruesome video on the telegram channel Gray Zone. The footage shows how Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former member of Wagner, is killed with a sledgehammer. His family is shocked.
Yevgeny Nuzhin (55) was sentenced to 24 years in prison after a murder in 1999, but the Wagner group plucked him from prison in July to fight in Ukraine. There he was captured by the Ukrainian army two months later.
During his imprisonment in Ukraine, Nuzhin quickly admitted that he had only joined the Wagner group in order to be released earlier. In an interview, he even criticized Putin and said he wanted to defect to the Ukrainian camp to fight against Moscow.
Killed like a beast
Nevertheless, Nuzhin recently ended up in Russian hands again. According to unconfirmed reports, he was part of an exchange deal between Russian and Ukrainian prisoners. A video that surfaced online over the weekend shows that the Wagner group has shown no mercy to “defector” Nuzhin.
Horrifying footage of Nuzhin’s execution surfaced on the Gray Zone telegram channel. Soldiers tape his head to the wall, after which an unrecognizable man starts beating him with a sledgehammer. It is through the terrible video that Yevgeny Nuzhin’s family learned of his death. Son Ilya Nuzhin confirmed this to the Russian human rights group Gulagu. “Our whole family cried when we saw the images. He was killed like an animal.”
Wagner boss scoffs at the video
The human rights organization Gulagu is not pleased with the execution. “Ukraine should never have returned him to Russia. They knew what danger he would face there,” says Osechkin, the head of Gulagu The Guardian. According to Gulagu, it is also inevitable that the murder took place with the permission of the Russian security services.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, has tried to distance itself from the video. “This is none of our business,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
But the Wagner army, which has often been accused of war crimes, is proud of the video itself. The leader of the group, Yevgeni Prigozhin, responded in a statement. “He has betrayed our people and his comrades,” he declared the execution. Prigozhin, one of Putin’s confidants, even scoffed at the horror images. “The video is excellent directorial work that can be watched in one sitting,” he said sarcastically. “’A dog’s death for a dog’ I think is a good title for this movie.”
Wagner boss Yevgeni Prigozhin. — © AP
