“The traitor received the traditional Wagnerian punishment”. It is with these words, which accompany a video posted on Telegram on Sunday, that the Wagner group announced the killing of a former member. Last September, Evgueni Anatolievich Nouzhin, 55, left the Russian mercenaries to join the Ukrainian troops. A desertion that the paramilitary group wanted to severely punish.
In the video extract, the man explains his escape and the consequences that followed. “On November 11, in a street in kyiv, I was hit on the head and lost consciousness. I woke up in this cellar where I was told that they were going to judge me”, Noujin explains. A stranger then enters the field of the camera, and the deserter is brutally hit by a blow to the temple, before being finished off by a second blow. The man then lies on the ground, visibly dead.
On Monday, the son of Evgueni Nouzhin confirmed with the Guardian that the man appearing in the video was indeed his father. In an interview with Russian human rights group Gulagu.net, Ilya Nouzhin also said her family learned of her father’s death through Telegram, which left them “horrified”.
“Our whole family was in tears watching the video… He was murdered like an animal”regrets the son of the ex-member of Wagner.
According to Le Monde, the video published by the paramilitary group would only be a staging in order to “attempt to instill terror”.
Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is under Western sanctions, on Sunday approved of the assassination, calling Nuzhin a “traitor”. “He betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, consciously betrayed“, lambasted the ally of Vladimir Putin. “It’s a dog’s death for a dog“, reacted Prigojine again.
On Monday, the Kremlin meanwhile sought to distance itself from the video. “It’s none of our businesss,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Tags: murdered animal deserter Wagner group savagely executed family horrified
