News Feed

Russian media: Wagner Group executes 10 mercenaries for refusing to fight in Ukraine

1 min read

Russian state-controlled mercenary group Wagner Group has executed at least ten mercenaries for refusing to fight in Ukraine, Andrey Medvedev, former commander of Wagner Group prisoner Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was killed with a sledgehammer, told The Insider, a Russian investigative media outlet.

Medvedev said he was personally present at several of the killings. According to Medvedev, two of the executed mercenaries were not recruited from Russian prisons.

Nuzhin was a former prisoner who had signed a contract to fight with Wagner in Ukraine. Shortly after arriving, he surrendered to Ukrainian forces.

On Nov. 13, a video surfaced of his execution. It later turned out that Nuzhin had been part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine, The Insider reports.

Putin's ally Evgeniy Prigozhin, who runs the Wagner Group, said in November that Nuzhnin was "a traitor."

Russia deployed Wagner Group mercenaries, who operate worldwide, to eastern Ukraine amid its military’s heavy losses, the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on March 28.

The Wagner Group has been accused of human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings, in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mozambique.

EXCLUSIVE: Inside Ukraine’s covert operation to take out elite Wagner Group mercenaries in Donbas
Article image
Avatar
The Kyiv Independent news desk

We are the news team of the Kyiv Independent. We are here to make sure our readers get quick, essential updates about the events in Ukraine. Feel free to contact us via email with feedback and news alerts.

Read more
News Feed

U.S. President Donald Trump's remarks come after the Financial Times (FT) reported, citing undisclosed sources, that he asked President Volodymyr Zelensky whether Kyiv could strike Moscow or St. Petersburg if provided with long-range U.S. weapons.

"The stolen data includes confidential questionnaires of the company's employees, and most importantly, full technical documentation on the production of drones, which was handed over to the relevant specialists of the Ukrainian Defense Forces," a source in Ukraine's military intelligence told the Kyiv Independent.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called upon the EU to take action against Ukraine's conscription practices in an interview with Origo published on July 15, amid an ongoing dispute with Kyiv over the death of a Ukrainian conscript of Hungarian ethnicity.

Show More