HAMMER HORROR
Putin’s evil Wagner mercenaries ‘carry out ANOTHER sick sledgehammer execution on Russian soldier accused of treachery’
VLADIMIR Putin's twisted mercenaries have released a new sick video appearing to show another execution with a sledgehammer.
Evil fighters from the so-called Wagner Group shared footage that appeared to show them pummelling one of their own after they accused him of treason.
6
6
6
Dmitry Yakushchenko, 44, had crossed the frontline to Ukraine, and then was handed back to Russia in a prisoner swap.
The appalling video showed the man confessing after apparently being handed back to the Wagner Group.
However, doubts have since been raised over the video.
Putin's mercenaries released another unverified clip of Yakushchenko - claiming he was alive in an apparent U-turn.
READ MORE ON RUSSIA
The Wagner Group is a pro-Putin private army run by a brutal warlord known as "Putin's chef", Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Footage shows Dmitry with his head taped to a block on the wall as a fighter with a sledgehammer stands behind him.
“Today I was in the streets of Dnipro, where I received a blow to the head and lost consciousness," the fighter said.
“I woke up in this room where I was told that I was going to be tried [for desertion].”
Most read in The Sun
At this moment he is hit in the head by the sledgehammer, falling backwards before he is then struck twice more.
The footage is very similar to the case exactly three months ago when convicted murderer Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, was bludgeoned to death with the same weapon.
However - the Wagner Group have since released more footage of Yakushchenko in which he claims he's been "forgiven" for his "mistakes".
The new video was released by Prigozhin.
But there is no definitive proof that the fighter is alive, and it may be all part of the twisted misinformation game played by the Russians.
Prigozhin himself gave a bizarre rambling answer when asked about the execution, but implied there were more episodes to come.
“We can share the next series with you…. Good will always triumphs over evil, you know," he said.
Baza media reported: "“It is difficult to say for sure whether Yakushchenko is alive or not, without knowing the sequence of recording the video of the ‘resurrected’ and ‘executed’ fighter of the Wagner PMC [private military company].”
Reports in Russia say that Yakushchenko was a convicted murderer and robber who had been released from a 19 year jail sentence to fight in Ukraine.
He, too, had been handed back by the Ukrainians in an official PoW swap, only to be passed back to Wagner which then took the law in their own hands.
Wagner head Prigozhin, a close Putin henchman, has previously threatened to kill “traitors” who leave the front line, and defended the murder of Nuzhin, as did Putin's propagandists.
Yakushchenko, from Crimea, was initially recorded by the Ukrainians explaining how he escaped after being put on the frontline.
"I planned to find some way to escape,” he said.
“My fourth day started, I took my machine gun, some magazines, [and] a couple of grenades….
“I crawled somewhere and lay down until the shooting stopped, drones were flying.”
He kept moving his position and he “turned out to be on the Ukrainian side”.
He urged any Russians in a similar position to defect, too.
And he hoped Crimea would return to Ukraine, he told his interrogators.
6
6
The Ukrainians included Yakushchenko in a major PoW swap earlier this month.
It was a trade that also saw Russia hand back the bodies of British aid workers Chris Parry, 28, and colleague Andrew Bagshaw, 47.
The second element of the macabre footage about Yakushchenko is when he is evidently in Wagner hands.
“I am Dmitry Yakushchenko, born in 1978, in Crimea,” he says with his hand attached with adhesive tape to a block.
“I went to the front in the ranks of the Wagner PMC [private military company].
“At the front, I realised this was not my war…
“Today I was in the streets of Dnipro, where I received a blow to the head and lost consciousness.
“I woke up in this room where I was told that I was going to be tried.”
The video was shared by Grey Zone Telegram channel, which is linked to Wagner.
Yakushchenko appears to have been convicted of murder in Crimea when it was still under Ukrainian control, prior to annexation by Putin in 2014.
He was then transferred to a jail in Engels in Russia.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
It was from here he was recruited as part of the Russian scheme to free killers, rapists and other criminals to fight against Ukraine, offering them a pardon if they survive for six months.
Prigozhin previously sent the EU a bloody sledgehammer in a case after the union branded Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
6
Topics