Secretary of the General Council of United Russia Andrey Turchak threatened with a "Wagner sledgehammer" the deputy of the Kursk Regional Duma Maxim Vasiliev and his wife, the deputy of the Kursk City Assembly Svetlana Vasilyeva, who published a New Year's video greeting from Mexico. He wrote about this in his Telegram channel.
“The height of cynicism and inhumanity. No country, no flag. No honor, no dignity. No brains. The most correct thing that this couple can do upon returning from sunny Mexico is to resign their parliamentary powers of their own free will. I don’t know what will induce the Vasilievs to make this decision: “Wagner’s sledgehammer”, “Starovoit’s kick” or the realization of their insignificance, albeit belatedly, but I hope that after the New Year holidays the ranks of Kursk deputies will thin out, ”Turchak said.
Deputy Vasiliev himself told Podyom earlier that he had recorded a video for his relatives, and a Ukrainian acquaintance leaked it to the network. In the video, he pours beer into a glass, wishes everyone a Happy New Year and wishes "a lot of money and good mood." Vasilyev was criticized in social networks, accusing him of having arranged a feast “against the background of the tragedy”, “while the people of Kursk are listening to the broads”. “Our children are dying there, and he uploads a video, showing off a cocktail and shrimp on the beach in Mexico,” Pod'yom quoted local residents as saying.
With a sledgehammer, the Wagnerites killed the former prisoner Yevgeny Nuzhin, who went to fight, and then voluntarily surrendered to Ukrainian captivity. He was exchanged for the Russian military, and soon after, a PMC-linked channel published a video of him being "executed" with a sledgehammer.
This is not the first time Turchak has threatened violence, he was accused of involvement in the attack on journalist Oleg Kashin in 2010. Then Kashin was severely beaten, after which his finger was amputated. In 2015, Kashin announced that the case of his beating had been solved and named the people who tried to kill him. All the defendants are former security officers of the Mechanical Plant, which is part of the Leninets holding and belongs to the family of Andrei Turchak. In November of the same year, Turchak invited Kashin to the Pskov region "to talk, looking into his eyes." Turchak explained his silence on the accusations by Kashin, which he posted in several publications on his website, by the fact that earlier, in the framework of the criminal case, he answered all the questions that were of interest to the investigation.