A horrifying video (which Newsweek does not share because of its extremely graphic nature) of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a 55-year-old Russian ex-con and defector from the Wagner PMC, being killed with a sledgehammer, allegedly by fellow mercenaries, sparked shocked reactions from human rights activists and the public.
Members of Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council called on the Federal Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin—the country’s top prosecutor—to investigate the apparent extrajudicial execution.
The video was first published on Grey Zone, a Telegram channel linked to the Wagner group of mercenaries, which is unofficially involved in Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
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Wagner has allegedly recruited inmates from prisons across Russia to fight in the Donbass, according to the prisoner advocacy group Russia Behind Bars.
But the incident raised questions about the circumstance leading to the gruesome death of Nuzhin who, according to his own account, was sentenced in 1999 for 24 years on murder charges, went to the frontline and was taken by Ukraine as a war prisoner.
He appears to somehow have ended up back in Russia, despite Ukraine’s claims those not willing to be exchanged would remain in Ukraine, fueling concerns among human rights advocates.
The Claim
As the horrific footage began circulating on social media, some started to probe the circumstances of the apparent execution and how Nuzhin, a war prisoner, ended up in the hands of his former employers.
“Yevgeny Nuzhin was a Russian prison inmate who enlisted into the Wagner mercenary group to fight in Ukraine. After being captured by Ukrainians he expressed his desire to fight against Putin. He was exchanged and then executed with sledgehammer according to Wagner traditions,” wrote Kamil Galeev, a researcher at the Washington-based think tank The Wilson Center.
Human rights activists from Russia also raised concerns about the circumstances of the reported exchange.
“There are many questions and I hope we get to the bottom of this,” Vladimir Osechkin, the head of Gulagu.net, a rights group focusing on alleged abuses in the Russian penal colonies, said in a Guardian interview.
“Ukraine had a responsibility towards Nuzhin and he should have not been exchanged, given the dangers he faced in Russia.”
The Facts
The circumstances behind the capture, the alleged exchange, and the ensuing execution of Nuzhin are shrouded in mystery, fueling speculation and misleading claims.
Nuzhin was among the dozens of inmates recruited by the Wagner PMC founder (also known as “Putin’s Chef”) Yevgeny Prigozhin in July, according to his own statements, corroborated by at least one independent news outlet (Vazhnye Istorii, also known as iStories). The draft was part of a state-sanctioned campaign to bolster Russia’s waning military capabilities on the Ukraine frontlines.
Shortly after reaching the front, Nuzhin decided to surrender to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as he admitted in interviews given to Ukrainian outlets in the ensuing weeks.
In an interview with a Ukrainian war correspondent Yury Butusov, dated September 15, 2022, Nuzhin told his story, from being plucked out of confinement in the Ryazan federal penal colony in Central Russia, to joining the Wagner mercenaries in the Luhansk region and being sent to the battlefield, to his capture by the Ukrainians.
“He [Prigozhin] promised everybody pardons,” said Nuzhin in the interview. “Our salaries would be around 100,000 rubles ($1,653). If you got killed, your family would get something like five million rubles ($82,644). [He said that] the motherland was in danger, and so on and so forth.”
Ukrainian forces captured Nuzhin on September 4, although, he says, he decided to surrender “long before that.”
“When this whole [recruitment] thing started, I told myself that when I came, I would do whatever it took to surrender so I could try to make it [to the Freedom for Russia legion],” he said.
He also told Butusov that he wanted to fight on Ukraine’s side, “because it’s not Ukraine who attacked Russia, Putin who attacked Ukraine.”
“And I have relatives who live here. My uncle lives in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, and my sister lives in Lviv,” he said.
These statements have since been picked up by both pro-Moscow commentators suggesting Nuzhin was a “traitor” and “got what he deserved,” and dissenting voices in Russia and elsewhere calling for the case to be investigated.
Exactly what led to Nuzhin’s sudden and ultimately tragic return to his homeland, however, has been a matter of fervent speculation.
Nuzhin himself claims in the video that he was “abducted from Kyiv” and returned to Russia, though, given the circumstances of the video, it is possible the claim was made under duress.
“I am Nuzhin, Yevgeny Anatolyevich, born in 1967. I went to the front in order to cross to the Ukrainian side and fight against Russia. On October 4, I accomplished my plan of crossing over to the Ukrainian side. On November 11, 2022, I was in the street in Kyiv when I was hit on the head, as a result of which I lost consciousness. I woke up in this basement, where I was told that I would be judged,” he says in the clip.
Several independent outlets, including Meduza and Gulagu.net, reported that the former inmate at some point was part of an exchange, specifically one that took place earlier in November, according to Reuters.
A source initially told Gulagu.net that Nuzhin was swapped for 20 Ukrainian soldiers, while another source in Kyiv, adding to the confusion, said he was kidnapped and forcefully taken to Russia.
In a Sunday, November 13 interview with Gulagu.net, two sons of Nuzhin, Ilya and Nikita, confirmed that the man executed in the video was indeed their father, and said they feared for their lives after the “FSB started looking for them.”
Some, including Ukraine-based analysts, have speculated that Nuzhin was instructed by his seniors at Wagner to surrender in order to infiltrate Ukraine’s foreign legion, but failed the lie detector test upon being captured, “exposed as a provocateur” and swiftly sent back.
That version of events, though plausible, is also unverified.
Nuzhin recruited Prigozhin, while in captivity he had the task of joining one of the formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, his legend was raw, he did not pass the polygraph and was exposed by the Ukrainian side as a provocateur.
2/3— Mariia Kramarenko (@KramarenkoMari3) November 14, 2022
In a more conspiratorial vein, others, like exiled Russian MP Ilya Ponomaryov, argued that the video was either staged entirely—in order to intimidate fellow recruits—or that Nuzhin was “sacrificed” because he “failed” in his mission to join Ukraine’s forces (the latter being tied into the lie detector narrative, but likewise unevidenced).
Meanwhile Wagner founder Prigozhin, a staunch Putin ally who is under Western sanctions for alleged interference in the U.S. elections, initially appeared to celebrate the footage in a mocking statement, calling the clip “excellent directorial work.”
“In this show, it’s clear that [Nuzhin] did not find happiness in Ukraine, but met unkind but fair people,” Prigozhin stated, via his company Concord’s press release.
“Nuzhin betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, betrayed consciously.
“I think this movie is called A Dog’s Death for a Dog.”
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Following the media backlash and calls for an investigation of the apparent murder, Prigozhin issued another statement, calling Nuzhin a CIA plant, and blaming the U.S. for his death.
In the statement, Prigozhin called for Russian attorney general Igor Krasnov to investigate the circumstances of Nuzhin’s death, saying he was a “volunteer” member of the Wagner Group, but denied that he was abducted or killed by other group members.
Prigozhin went on to claim, without any evidence, that while Russian mercenaries could not have possibly carried out the kidnapping from Ukraine, it could have been done by the U.S. intelligence services who “abduct people throughout the entire world.”
In what appears to be more a tongue-in-cheek swipe at U.S. intelligence community than a genuine response, Putin’s former caterer suggested that Nuzhin was a sleeper agent for the U.S. recruited by the CIA decades ago, who “went to prison in good time 27 years ago so as to later infiltrate the PMC and create the circumstances for his execution.”
Putting aside the fact that Wagner PMC first emerged as a functional combat entity shortly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and that in 1999 Prigozhin was just setting up his restaurant business in St. Petersburg, the comment seems to be a deliberately provocative attempt to trigger more outrage, coming from the man behind the Internet Research Agency, the infamous Russian government-linked troll factory.
In response to a Newsweek comment request Prigozhin doubled down on his claims.
“If you watch carefully you’ll see that Nuzhin admitted to joining the Ukrainians,” a Concorde media representative told Newsweek via email, relaying Prigozhin’s reply.
“There are two other segments in the clip where the same point is made in more detail. Therefore a version of events that I like the most is that he was killed by American intelligence agents. Where and when, I do not know. But we will certainly investigate and will find out.”
The case, along with Prigozhin’s comments, has received wide coverage in the Russian state and independent media, but official Moscow has been reluctant to get involved. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the footage, said only that “it is not our business.” Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment.
Similarly, Ukrainian officials remained silent on Nuzhin’s story at the beginning, neither confirming nor denying whether he was part of the alleged prisoner exchange, despite multiple requests for comment from Gulagu.net and other rights groups.
Alexei Arestovich, an advisor to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, without directly admitting that Nuzhin had been exchanged, commented on the execution, saying that prisoner exchanges often pose a dilemma.
“On the one hand, we cannot reject the opportunity to swap prisoners. But if it did happen, we need to establish whether he was exchanged voluntarily or against his will. I don’t have such information,” he said on the YouTube show Feygin Live.
Arestovich added that while Ukraine continues to encourage Russian soldiers to surrender under safety guarantees, Nuzhin apparently was captured during combat, and thus was not eligible for such an option.
However, on Tuesday night Mikahylo Podolyak, another Zelensky aide, confirmed that Nuzhin had indeed been part of an exchange, though he said the ex-Wagner recruit volunteered to return.
“We have a simple approach. A war prisoner can sign a document excluding him from any exchange. That is how we certify it,” Podolyak explained in an interview with TV Rain, an independent Russian news channel.
However, according to the official, Nuzhin signed an agreement to be exchanged instead, and thus was sent back on a voluntary basis, in exchange for several Ukrainians held captive in Russia.
The Russian Federal Investigative Committee is yet to respond publicly to the investigation requests filed by, among others, the Russian Human Rights Council.
Newsweek has reached out to Prigozhin’s company Concord, the Russian Investigative Committee, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Zelensky’s office for comment.
The Ruling
Needs Context.
While there are a number of speculative narratives surrounding the Russian recruit’s grim fate, there is no conclusive information regarding how he ended up back in Russia, though on balance of evidence it is likely that he was exchanged.
Nuzhin himself claimed he was “abducted” from the Ukrainian capital by unknown men and taken back to Russia, but the reliability of his claims is undermined by the imminent threat of execution.
Wagner PMC chief’s claims that Nuzhin was “recruited by the CIA” in the late 90s to become a sleeper agent are entirely unevidenced, contradicting basic logic and the timeline of events.
Though no official statements have been issued by Moscow or Kyiv, a Ukrainian government advisor confirmed on Tuesday that Nuzhin was exchanged—but on a voluntary basis. He reaffirmed that Ukraine would not send captured soldiers back against their will.
FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK