The methods of terror employed by the Wagner militia continue. The head of the unit’s mercenaries fighting in Ukraine alongside the Russian army commented on Sunday on the alleged execution, with a sledgehammer to the head, of one of its ex-members accused of desertion.
Telegram accounts close to Wagner posted a video showing a man, his skull taped to a block of stone, being hit in the head with a mace. According to these sources, it would be a soldier of the group who deliberately surrendered to the Ukrainian army, but was then recaptured by the Russians.
“In this show, we see that (this man) did not find his happiness in Ukraine, but that he met unkind but fair people”, commented Evguéni Prigojine, the head of Wagner, quoted Sunday by his Press service. “It’s a magnificent work of realization, it can be seen in one sitting. I hope no animals were harmed during the filming,” he added. AFP was unable to confirm the authenticity of this video, nor its authors.
A prisoner recruited to fight in Ukraine
The video is made up of three fragments: the first two show a man, introducing himself as Yevgeny Nuzhin, explaining, visibly to journalists after being taken prisoner, that he voluntarily surrendered to the Ukrainian army to fight for its sides “against Putin”.
The last fragment shows this same man, his face taped to a stone, saying that he surrendered on September 4. He is then hit with a sledgehammer. The NGO Gulagu.net, which specializes in the defense of detainees in Russia, claims that Yevgeny Nuzhin was a prisoner who had been recruited from a Russian penal colony to fight in Ukraine.
The NGO asked that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shed light on the reason why this man, after having surrendered, could fall back into the hands of the Russians. The NGO mentioned two possibilities: he could have been kidnapped in territory under the control of kyiv, or exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners.
Since 2014, Wagner Group mercenaries have been accused of serving the interests of Vladimir Putin’s regime and committing abuses in numerous conflict zones, from Syria to Ukraine, from Africa to America from South.
In recent months, the group has been actively operating on the Ukrainian front, in support of the Russian army. He is suspected of having toured Russian prisons to recruit prisoners in exchange for sentence reductions. In September, 61-year-old Yevgeny Prigojine admitted having founded the paramilitary organization after years of denial. This week, he also bragged about having carried out electoral influence operations in the United States.