Source A video of the brutal execution of a former prisoner who served in the Wagner PMC and surrendered to the Armed Forces of Ukraine appeared on the telegram. What is known. The video (we will not give a link to it) began to diverge on social networks on the evening of November 12th. The first one, around 22:00, was published by the still unknown telegram channel “NETVOINE” (at the time of publication it had less than 3,000 subscribers), and two hours later the video appeared in the Gray Zone channel (375 thousand subscribers), which is usually associated with PMC “Wagner”. The post had 655,000 views by Sunday evening.
In the video, a man with his head tied with tape to a stone log appears to be Evgeny Nuzhin. “I went to the front to go over to the side of Ukraine, to fight against the Russians. On September 4, he implemented his plan to go over to the side of Ukraine. On November 11, 2022, I was on the streets of Kyiv, where I received a blow to the head, as a result of which I lost consciousness, woke up in this basement, where I was told that I would be judged, ”he says. After that, a man in camouflage off-camera beats Nuzhin on the head with a sledgehammer.
The Gray Zone post says that the video shows former Wagner PMC fighter Evgeniy Nuzhin, who voluntarily surrendered to the Armed Forces of Ukraine on September 4 and “began to hand over all the facts he knew”, and then told the Ukrainian media that he wanted to fight for Ukraine. “A sledgehammer and traitors have a close connection for the “orchestra” (as the Wagner PMC is called. – The Bell). And now, suddenly disappearing from the investigation in Kyiv, the traitor received the traditional primordial Wagnerian punishment, ”the channel says. In 2019, Novaya Gazeta published a video in which Wagner PMC fighters in Syria kill with a sledgehammer and then mock the corpse of a Syrian who deserted from the army of Bashar al-Assad.
As the Caution, News channel found out, 55-year-old Yevgeny Nuzhin is a former surveillance officer of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (now the Russian Guard), convicted in 1999 for murder and hooliganism, and then for attempting to escape. Nuzhin's term was supposed to expire in 2027, he served his sentence in a special colony for former security officials in the Ryazan region. From the colony, Nuzhin led social networks in which he supported Russia's actions in the Donbass and Ukraine, the channel notes. In July, the We Can Explain telegram channel wrote that Yevgeny Prigozhin, recruiting prisoners for the war, visited IK-3 in Skopin, where Nuzhin was imprisoned.
The interview, which Gray Zone wrote about, was released on September 15 on the channel of Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov. In it, Nuzhin tells (you can read it in Meduza’s retelling) about his biography and term, Prigozhin’s arrival at IK-3 in July 2022, and his service in the “assault squad” of prisoners in the Wagner PMC. According to Nuzhin, joining the PMC was voluntary, and he went to war to surrender and go to fight on the side of Ukraine in the “Russian Legion”. “I prefer to watch history in the theatre. As for the sledgehammer, in this show it is clear that he did not find happiness in Ukraine, but met with unkind, but fair people. It seems to me that this film is called “To the dog – dog's death”. Excellent directorial work, looks in one breath. I hope that during the filming, not a single animal was harmed, ”his press service quoted Prigozhin as saying.
The main question remains how exactly Nuzhin got from captivity back into the hands of the Wagner PMC. The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel wrote on Sunday night that the man was handed over to the Russian side during the exchange of prisoners on November 11 according to the 45-45 scheme. Former press secretary of Vyacheslav Volodin Anastasia Kashevarova wrote that the exchange was carried out by PMC Wagner, which has “its own exchange fund.” True, the source of the Baza publication in the Wagner PMC stated that “Nuzhin was kidnapped from Kyiv by the Wagnerites.”
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