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A convicted assassin who was released from prison to fight for Russia’s Wagner group has become the second mercenary to be brutally beaten to death with a sledgehammer after he was accused of defecting to Ukraine.
Dmitry Yakushchenko, 44, had his head taped to a rock with cling film before being bludgeoned to death with the sledgehammer in an ordeal that was filmed and posted on Telegram.
Yakushchenko was accused of ‘treason’ for defecting to Ukraine after coming to the front. He was later recaptured by his former Wagner colleagues and a gruesome video shows him being executed.
The 44-year-old is now the second Wagner fighter to be executed with a sledgehammer after convicted murderer Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, was killed by his compatriots in November last year.
Dmitry Yakushchenko, 44, had his head taped to a rock with cling film before being bludgeoned to death with the sledgehammer in an ordeal that was filmed and posted online.
Wagner’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close Putin henchman, has previously threatened to kill ‘traitors’ leaving the front line and defended Nuzhin’s assassination, as have Putin’s propagandists.
Harrowing video shows Yakushchenko confessing to surrendering to Ukraine while his head was strapped tightly to the side of a rock with cling film, while a man with a sledgehammer stood behind him.
Yakushchenko, dressed in military uniform, said he “realized that this was not my war” after he was sent to fight for Putin, saying he had been hit over the head on the streets of Dnipro in central Ukraine. , and woke up in the room tied to a rock.
Yakushchenko added that he was told he was going to stand trial for desertion.
At that moment, the man behind him raised his sledgehammer and struck Yakushchenko over the head, the sound of his skull smashing against the rock echoing through the dark room.
Yakushchenko is hit two more times: his body he collapsed to the ground after sickening blows.
Reports in Russia say Yakushchenko was a convicted murderer and robber who had been released from a 19-year jail sentence to fight in Putin’s war.
When he reached the front with Wagner’s mercenaries, he surrendered to the Ukraine.
But he had apparently been returned to the notoriously brutal Wagner group in a prisoner exchange when he was brutally executed.
Before being executed, he told the camera: ‘I am Dmitry Yakushchenko, born in 1978, in Crimea.
‘I went to the front in the ranks of Wagner’s PMC [private military company].
‘At the front, I realized that this was not my war…
‘Today I was on the streets of Dnipro, where I received a blow to the head and lost consciousness.
‘I woke up in this room where they told me they were going to judge me [for desertion]’ Yakushchenko said seconds before he was brutally executed.
His murder echoes the execution of convicted murderer Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, who was also beaten to death with a sledgehammer (pictured moments before his death)
His murder echoes the execution of convicted murderer Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, who was also beaten to death with a sledgehammer.
He, too, had been returned by the Ukrainians in an official PoW trade, only to be returned to Wagner, who then took the law into his own hands.
Wagner’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close Putin henchman, has previously threatened to kill ‘traitors’ leaving the front line and advocated killing Nuzhin, as have Putin’s propagandists.
Yakushchenko, from Crimea, was initially recorded by the Ukrainians explaining how he escaped after being put on the front lines.
“I was planning 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, the drones were flying.”
‘I kept moving and my position turned out to be on the Ukrainian side. If any Russian has a chance to leave, they better do it.
Yakushchenko, from Crimea, was initially recorded by the Ukrainians explaining how he escaped after being put on the front line.
Yakushchenko said he hoped Crimea would return to Ukraine, he told his interrogators.
The Ukrainians included Yakushchenko in a major PoW exchange earlier this month in which Russia also returned the bodies of British aid workers Chris Parry, 28, and his colleague Andrew Bagshaw, 47, according to the Cheka-TV channel. OGPU Telegram.
Video of Yakushchenko’s execution was shared by the Gray Zone Telegram channel, which is linked to Wagner.
Yakushchenko appears to have been convicted of murder in Crimea while it was still under Ukrainian control, before Putin annexed it in 2014.
He was then transferred to a prison in Engels in Russia.
It was here that he was recruited as part of the Russian scheme to free murderers, rapists and other criminals to fight Ukraine, offering them a pardon if they survive for six months.