Human Rights Ombudsman in the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova promised to apply to the Investigative Committee (IC) to verify the authenticity of the video, in which prisoner Dmitry Yakushchenko, who escaped from PMC Wagner, was executed with a sledgehammer. She told RBC about it.
She clarified that extrajudicial executions are unacceptable and that the video needs to be checked.
One of the founders of PMC Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, commented on the appearance of the video on social networks on the same day, answering a question from the editors of Caution, Media. The recidivist criminal Prigozhin said, referring to the owner of the media Ksenia Sobchak, that these are “children having fun”, and hinted that the PMC already has or will have similar videos:
“Ksenia, don’t take everything so sadly. Children are having fun. You thought that the film about Yakushchenko was a one-episode drama “The Dawns Here Are Quiet”, but I think it is more like “Seventeen Moments of Spring”. If you wish, we can share the next series with you. Know that good will always triumph over evil.
On February 13, the GRAY ZONE Telegram channel associated with PMC Wagner published another video of a prisoner being executed with a sledgehammer. It is alleged that the footage shows Dmitry Yakushchenko, 44, a native of Crimea. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison for robbery and murder, from the colony he was recruited into the Wagner PMC and sent to war in Ukraine. He surrendered to Ukrainian captivity after 4 days, after which he managed to give an interview to the Ukrainian media, where he said that he immediately planned to escape. How exactly Yakushchenko ended up with the PMC fighters is unknown. According to GRAY ZONE, he was hit in the Dnieper, after which he immediately woke up in the basement, where he was executed. Some media outlets, including The Agency, claim that Yakushchenko can be seen in the Defense Ministry video of the exchange of prisoners on December 1 and in the RT report . The Insider was unable to identify whether the person in the Defense Ministry footage is Dmitry Yakushchenko or establish contact with any of his relatives.