Public execution with a sledgehammer as a warning to Russian soldiers who defect to the Ukrainians. What does the posted video mean?

The shocking video first appeared on social media on the night of November 13. It was published on Telegram by the Gray Zone channel, which regularly reports on the actions of “Vagner’s private military company”, as it is called, a group of mercenaries fighting for money and for Russian interests around the world, now also in Ukraine.

In the video, which Deník N will not publish due to its brutal content and the recorded death of a person, there is a man in a military uniform. His head is wrapped in duct tape and pulled tightly to the brick post. His name is Yevgeny Anatolyevich Nuzhin and he was born in 1967 in Russia. Until he was arrested, he lived in the village of Perevoz in the Novgorod Region. “I went to the front to go over to the Ukrainian side,” he admits, to what most people with their heads against the wall would admit. He claims, apparently in anticipation of further developments, that on September 4 he managed to “carry out a plan to defect to the Ukrainian side.”

Then there is a time jump and the man claims to have been walking the streets of Kyiv on November 11th. Suddenly, someone hit him hard on the head, causing him to immediately lose consciousness. When he woke up, he was in the basement where he is now. Back at the Wagner family. “They informed me that they would judge me,” he states. This is followed by the sledgehammer execution itself. The face of the “executioner” on