I don’t know who started a Substack page translating BBC Russian news articles into English - it might have been the Beeb itself, for all I know - but I want to buy him or her a beer. Or a vodka.
You might have noticed that the word “sledgehammer” comes up often in news stories about The Wagner Group, the mercenaries hauling convicted out of Russian jails to fight in Ukraine. The reason? It’s a long, and truly horrifying, story:
The last time Ilya and Nikita Nuzhin spoke to their father Yevgeny was on a video call from prison in August 2022. Nuzhin senior had been in jail since 1999, serving a 28-year sentence for murder, and this was the family’s main means of communication.
Yevgeny seemed scared and lost, says Nikita’s wife Anastasia, who agreed to speak to the BBC on behalf of the family. He said a recruiter from the Wagner Group private military company had visited the prison, and he had decided to join up to fight in Ukraine.
“All his relatives were against it," Anastasia remembers. "His wife was crying. But he said: no, I’m going anyway.”
Although the family didn’t know it at the time, Nuzhin was about to become one of thousands of serving Russian prisoners who would volunteer to join the Wagner Group, and risk all in the hope of a pardon in exchange for fighting on the frontline.
In the four months since that family video call, BBC Russian has been able to confirm the deaths of at least 240 serving prisoners killed fighting in Ukraine. What was initially a secretive recruitment process, is now something that is openly acknowledged at the highest level in Russia.
But it was the story of the life and eventual terrible death of Yevgeny Nuzhin that first brought the issue into the open and was to become a symbol of the grim fate awaiting so many of these new volunteers.
[…]
On the night of 13 November, a video was posted on Grey Zone, a Russian Telegram channel linked to the Wagner group. It was called ‘The Hammer of Revenge’.
The video begins with clips from Nuzhin's Ukrainian YouTube interviews, in which he can be heard saying he surrendered voluntarily to fight for Ukraine. Then he appears in the frame, lying on his side. A bright light is shining in his face, and his head is taped to a stone block.
"I, Yevgeny Anatolyevich Nuzhin, born in 1967, went to the frontline with the aim of switching sides and fighting against the Russians.,” he says. “On September 4, I carried out my plan and crossed to the Ukrainian side. On November 11, 2022, on a street in Kyiv, I received a blow to the head and lost consciousness. I woke up in this cellar where I was told that I would be tried.”
Then a person in the background smashes a sledgehammer into Nuzhin’s head and kills him.
Two versions of the video were posted on social media. In the first, the last few seconds have been blurred out. In the second they have not. The video ends with a caption calling Nuzhin a traitor who "received the traditional primordial Wagnerian punishment."
Although it has never been independently verified, the video is widely believed to be genuine.
Wagner’s caterer-turned-leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has never officially confirmed that the video is genuine, but he’s reportedly been sending gifts of Wagner-branded sledgehammers to allies and enemies alike.
Nuzhin’s story remains shrouded in mystery, regarding his own motives (did he really intend to switch sides and join Russians fighting for Ukraine?) and how he wound up back in Russian custody after being captured by the Ukrainians.
What isn’t at all mysterious: in the debate over whether Russia is a “terrorist state,” the fact that they’re now making ISIS-style videos must be factored into the discussion.
Of course, even if Russia is a terror state run by a terrorist government - no argument from me - and even if most Russians are too apathetic or scared or even supportive to do anything about it, it does not follow that every Russian is a terrorist.
Indeed, that makes those Russians trying to protest against Putin and the war that much more courageous:
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