Relatives of a former Russian prison inmate who defected to Ukraine after being recruited by the Kremlin-linked private military group Wagner have expressed “horror” at his apparent execution after gruesome video emerged on Friday showing him he was hit repeatedly with a hammer.
Footage of the summary killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin was released over the weekend by the Wagner-linked Telegram channel Gray Zone. In the video, Nuzhin is shown lying with his head stuck to a brick wall as an unidentified man in combat clothing hits him with a hammer.
Nuzhin, 55, was serving a 24-year prison sentence for a murder he committed in 1999 when he was released in July and recruited into Wagner, a notorious military group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a powerful Russian businessman and a close ally of Vladimir. To put.
After his capture by Ukrainian forces in September, Nuzhin gave a series of interviews in the country, in which he said he had joined the Wagner Group to break out of prison and quickly hatched a plan to deliver -se in Ukraine
In interviews, he also criticized the Russian leadership and expressed his desire to join Ukrainian forces and fight against Moscow.
Ilya Nuzhin, Yevgeny’s son, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the man in the video was his father, but declined to comment further, citing “security concerns”.
In an interview with Russian human rights group Gulagu.net on Sunday afternoon, Ilya Nuzhin said his family learned of his father’s death via Telegram, which left them “horrified”.
“Our whole family was crying watching the video … he was killed like an animal,” Nuzhin said.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the video, or how Nuzhin would have ended up in Russia.
Unconfirmed reports said Nuzhin had been part of a recent Russian-Ukrainian prisoner swap, news that has raised concerns among human rights groups.
“There are a lot of questions and I hope we get to the bottom of it,” Vladimir Osechkin, the head of Gulagu.net, a rights group that focuses on alleged abuses in the Russian prison system, told the Guardian.
“Ukraine had a responsibility to Nuzhin and he should not have been traded, given the dangers he faced in Russia.”
Osechkin said all signs pointed to Wagner’s involvement in the killing and said he planned to send a request to Russian authorities to open a criminal case.
“Wagner would not have been able to commit this medieval execution without the approval of the Russian security services,” Osechkin said.
Prigozhin, who is under Western sanctions for his role in Wagner, expressed his approval of the killing on Sunday, calling Nuzhin a “traitor”.
“Nuzhin betrayed his people, he betrayed his comrades, he consciously betrayed,” he said.
In September, Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef” because his catering business hosted dinners attended by the Russian president, admitted to founding Wagner, a link he has previously repeatedly denied.
Wagner has been repeatedly accused of war crimes and human rights violations, including torturing and killing prisoners in Syria, where he has been fighting alongside the Russian military and Bashar al-Assad’s government.
On Monday, the Kremlin sought to distance itself from the video, which has been widely discussed on Russian social media, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying it was “none of our business.”
The Guardian previously reported that Prigozhin was personally recruiting soldiers from Russia’s extensive prison system in an attempt to make up for the acute shortage of personnel on the battlefield. According to a Russian human rights group, Wagner has so far recruited more than 20,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
There have also been widespread reports of Wagner recruiting foreign convicts into Russian prisons, including citizens of the five Central Asian nations.
On Monday, Zambia’s foreign minister said a 23-year-old from that country, who was serving a prison sentence in a prison outside Moscow, ended up fighting in Ukraine, where he was killed.