RRussia’s search for and revenge on “traitors” escalates. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenaries are particularly radical. Over the weekend, a Telegram channel, which is attributed to the businessman’s “Wagner” gang, published a short video and called it “Hammer of revenge”. It features a former convict named Yevgeny Nushin. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was imprisoned in a western Russian penal camp.
In the summer, Nushin accepted an offer from Prigozhin to fight with “Wagner” at the front in Ukraine. Thousands of Russian convicts are said to have done so. By his own account, Nushin wanted to “cross over to the side of Ukraine and fight against the Russians” from the start. At least that’s what the mid-fifties told Ukrainian journalists and bloggers, who published well-received interviews with him. From the captivity that Nushin is said to have taken in early September.
In the video, however, he was obviously seen again in “Wagner’s” violence. In it, Nuschin’s head is fixed to a block of stone. He received a “hit on the head” in Kyiv last Friday and regained consciousness in “this basement,” says Nushin. He was told that he would be “judged”. Then someone in camouflage, whose face cannot be seen, slays Nushin with a sledgehammer.
The video shows two blows. Anyone who is “approximately on the subject” knows that “sledgehammer and traitors for the ‘orchestra’ (the mercenaries, editor’s note) are closely linked,” commented the Telegram channel. The background is a video of an alleged “Wagner” torture murder in Syria in 2017, which the newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” published.
Questions also arise for Ukraine
Nushin’s case raises questions for Ukraine. Kyiv wants to persuade Russian mercenaries and soldiers to go into captivity. “I want to live!” is one of the programs. An exchange against will should be excluded. But according to Russian reports, which were initially uncommented in Kiev, Nushin was not kidnapped in Kyiv, as his last words indicate, but handed over to the Russian side last Friday in an exchange of 45 prisoners each.
