The Russian mercenary who appeared in a video this week being executed for defecting from the Wagner Group has reappeared in a new video, but completely unharmed. Next to him is the oligarch Yevgueni Prigozhin, founder and head of the paramilitary company, who introduces the man to a group of journalists to deny that his men had killed the combatant.
Prigozhin assures in the video (https://t.me/sashakots/38528) that Dimitri Yakuschenko had been captured by Ukrainian troops after getting lost near the front line. He was later handed over in a prisoner exchange and with him brought valuable information about enemy operations.
The businessman, who after years of denials acknowledged in September 2022 having created the private military company Wagner, invites those present to ask him "if it is true that they killed him with a mallet."
The new video was published this Wednesday on the Telegram channel of the Russian war correspondent Alexander Kots.
Yakuschenko assures that during his captivity in the Ukraine he was tortured and forced to tell the camera what the military dictated to him. He also explains that everything he said in the recorded video then he did it because he had to stay alive.
As a result, says the "resurrected" mercenary, he was then able to pass on important information to the heads of the Wagner Group. Prigozhin's press service reacted with the word "Molodets!" (Bravo!, in Russian).
On February 13, a video with the alleged "execution" of Dimitri Yakuschenko was broadcast on social networks. It was published by the Telegram channel Gray Zone, which claimed that the man had voluntarily surrendered to the Ukrainian armed forces and was "killed" with a sledgehammer for deserting.
It was the second time such a recording had appeared. In November 2022, the Gray Zone published another video with the alleged execution of another mercenary, named Yevgueni Nuzhin.
At first Prigozhin then celebrated the grisly "execution" for "betraying his comrades." But then he backed down, denied Wagner had anything to do with it, and blamed "the US secret services."
