Members of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group have released another disturbing video apparently showing the second sledgehammer execution of what they say is a captured defector.
The clip posted in the private army’s semi-official Telegram channel over the weekend comes around three months after Wagner publicized the violent end of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former prisoner recruited into the group who then turned against Russia.
The new video eerily echoes the Nuzhin footage. The clip allegedly shows Dmitry Yakushchenko, a convict from Russian-occupied Crimea who joined Wagner while serving a 19-year prison sentence for robbery and murder. “Through the chance given to him for liberation and atonement for sins, he ended up in the Wagner Group,” the Telegram post reads.