Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has referred to the video showing the execution with a sledgehammer of imprisoned Yevgeny Nuzhin posted by a Telegram channel affiliated with PMC Wagner as “beautiful directorial work”. His words are quoted by the press service of the Concord company, which Prigozhin founded.
“I prefer watching plays at the theatre. When it comes to the sledgehammered, this show demonstrates that he didn’t find happiness in Ukraine, instead meeting unkind but fair people. I think this movie is titled ‘Dog’s death to a dog’.
“Beautiful directional work, it’s a smooth viewing. I hope that no animal was harmed during filming,”
he said.
According to Telegram channel Ostorozhno Novosti, Ilya, son of Yevgeny Nuzhin, was surprised to find out his father had been in Kyiv and then later at the hands of PMC Wagner.
“Either there’s a fucking amazing diversion Wagner group operating right under the nose of khokhols (ethnic slur used by Russians to refer to Ukrainians — translator’s note), which is doubtful! Or khokhols sold him themselves or killed him themselves. Let them burn in hell,” he said.
The information on the execution taking place was confirmed by a source within PMC Wagner to Russian anti-torture website Gulagu.net.
In the video, Nuzhin says that he switched to fighting for Ukraine in the war back in September and that he was kidnapped from Kyiv in November. The man regained consciousness in a basement, he was told that he “would be tried”, he adds. After that, the video shows Nuzhin’s head being smashed with a sledgehammer.
The man was recruited for PMC Wagner in the penal colony#3 of the Russian city of Ryazan. He was serving a 24-year-long sentence for murder, destruction of others’ property, hooliganism, and attempted escape from place of imprisonment. Eventually, he surrendered into Ukrainian captivity and gave an interview to Ukrainian journalist Yury Butusov, in which he criticised Putin and said that he wanted to fight on Ukraine’s side.
PMC Wagner previously carried out extrajudicial executions in Syria. In 2017, they recorded a video, in which a man’s legs and arms were smashed with a sledgehammer, his head was cut off, his arms chopped off, and his decapitated body burned. The head was then put on the closest fence. It was later reported that there were at least two people executed.