‘Executed’ Wagner Group fighter shown alive to press

"Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military company Wagner Group, has confirmed that Dmitry Yakushchenko, a soldier who was previously assumed by some to have been executed, is alive.

Yakushchenko came into the media spotlight this week, after a video purportedly showing his execution was published on social media. In it, he confessed to deserting Wagner and going to the Ukraine-controlled side. He claimed that he had been abducted in Ukraine for a “trial” before an unidentified person appeared to smash his head with a sledgehammer. The video was heavily blurred.

Since the ‘execution’ video was confirmed to be a hoax, Prigozhin claimed that Yakushchenko was captured after getting lost on the frontline and “acted like a real man, that is told lots of f**king lies” to survive. He backed the assertion that the man returned with a lot of “useful information.” RT