A man wearing a camouflage uniform walks out of PMC Wagner Centre during the official opening of the office block in Saint Petersburg on November 4
(Picture: REUTERS)The brutal execution of a Russian war defector conscripted to Putin’s private army was a warning to others thinking of surrendering, western officials said on Tuesday.
Footage of former prisoner Yevgeny Nuzhin being hit with a sledgehammer was posted on a telegram account linked to the Wagner Group this week.
The horrifying video was aimed at soldiers who have been conscripted from prisons and elsewhere to fight in Ukraine as Russia continues to lose ground, officials believe.
They added they have “no reason to doubt” its authenticity and it is a “brutalisation” of the messaging around the war.
Nuzhin had been serving a 24-year prison sentence for murder when he was freed in July and conscripted into Wagner, a notorious military group run by a Russian businessman and a close Putin ally.
He was captured by Ukrainian forces in September and gave a series of interviews in which he said he had joined the group to get out of prison and had always planned to surrender.
Unconfirmed reports suggest the 55-year-old had been part of a recent Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchange.
Western officials said: “There’s no reason for us to doubt video.
“In fact, the use of a hammer as a tool is something which we’ve seen from the Wagner group previously during the Syria conflict.
“So the hallmarks of Wagner Group are there.
“It’s absolutely messaging, and will be aimed at all of those people who have been conscripted from prisons and elsewhere and taken to the front line about what choices they made.“It’s a brutalisation of war.”
They added that it was unlikely to have been a legally authorised killing and it is expected to “feature in further investigations in due course”.
Thousands of men are believed to have been conscripted from prisons in an attempt to boost the Russian army after Putin lost more men than he expected in the first months of the war in Ukraine.
Asked to comment on the execution video, Wagner founder Prigozhin Yevgeny said in remarks released by his spokeswoman that the video should be called: “A dog receives a dog’s death”.
“Nuzhin betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, betrayed consciously,” Prigozhin said on Sunday.
In an interview with a Russian human rights group, Nuzhin’s son Ilya said: “Our whole family was in tears watching the video … he was murdered like an animal.”
