A mural praises the Russian Wagner Group and their mercenaries fighting in Ukraine March 30, 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia.Pierre Crom/Getty Images
Convicts and mercenaries were recruited to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.
A convict recruited for the Wagner group deserted and turned himself in to Ukrainian forces.
After being returned to Russia on a prisoner exchange, a video on Telegram showed his execution.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, its soldiers have complained that they are disorganized, poorly armed and undertrained, and many have expressed reluctance to enter battles they were unprepared for.
A New York Times investigation published Saturday, which detailed Russia’s numerous mistakes during the war, uncovered additional details about a specific class of soldiers: convicted criminals and mercenaries. Many of these men were recruited by Wagner, a notorious mercenary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and restaurateur, is also known as “Putin’s chef” because his catering company has won billions of dollars in government contracts. In September, after years of rejection, he identified himself as the founder of Wagner, which was formed in 2014.
Wagner is not under the control of the Russian military, as mercenaries are technically illegal in Russia, but the group is now considered the Kremlin’s private army. You fought for Putin and Russia on the front lines in Ukraine. To build up his armed forces, Prigozhin went to prisons and penal colonies to recruit more soldiers after Russian troops suffered heavy casualties.
In August, he visited a prison near Moscow and recruited 55-year-old Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was sentenced to 20 years for murder, according to the Times. In a video capturing Prigozhin’s recruitment process, he told inmates they would be pardoned if they agreed to fight – and warned they would be shot if they joined and then deserted.
Nuzhin entered but fled after two days of recovering bodies and surrendered to Ukrainian forces. In an interview with The Times while he was a prisoner of war in Ukraine, Nuzhin said: “What good did Putin do while he was in power? Has he done any good?”
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“I think this war is Putin’s grave,” he added.
But soon Nuzhin would be dead.
Although the Times did not initially publish their interview with Nuzhin, he had also spoken to Ukrainian media, which published his name. During interviews, he said he joined the Wagner group to get out of prison and wanted to join and fight with the Ukrainian armed forces, The Guardian reported in November.
He was eventually returned to the Russian forces as part of a prisoner swap and shortly thereafter appeared in a video shared by a Telegram account linked to Wagner. The video showed Nuzhin lying down, with a man in camouflage clothing standing over him, multiple outlets reported. “I woke up in this basement, being told I was going to be sentenced,” he says, according to the Times.
The man then hits Nuzhin’s head with a sledgehammer.
Prigozhin later expressed his support for the murder on Telegram: “Nuzhin betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, betrayed them knowingly.”
Nuzhin’s family members said in November they were “appalled” by the video after it was released. Nuzhin’s son told The Guardian: “Our whole family was in tears when they saw the video… he was murdered like an animal.”
The Times reported that when asked by journalists about the video, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov simply said: “It’s none of our business.”
Read the original article on Business Insider