Press Release, 15.11.2022

Photo: Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) / Photo by Artyom Krasnov, Kommersant

The Yabloko factions in the Moscow City Duma and the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg sent appeals to Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, demanding to conduct an investigation and initiate a criminal case into the brutal murder (according to information disseminated on the Internet) of a Russian citizen Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former prisoner recruited by the private mercenary group the Wagner Group. The letters were signed by Maxim Kruglov, head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma, and Boris Vishnevsky, Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly.

The object of the check should be a shocking video demonstrating the brutal murder of Nuzhin. If the murder is confirmed, the Investigative Committee must initiate a criminal case.

Regardless of what this person was doing, the crime should be investigated, Maxim Kruglov believes. According to Kruglov, in Russia there should be no armed gangs practicing barbaric demonstrative reprisals against anyone. Moreover, these gangs almost do not hide their political claims, the head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma emphasises.

“Actually, questions to [the head of the Investigative Committee] Bastyrkin should have been asked long ago by those people who should do this because of their job, for example, State Duma deputies who are obviously keen now on stamping new repressive laws,” Maxim Kruglov writes.

Boris Vishnevsky also writes about the fact that the authorities do not respond to the public execution of a Russian citizen.

“Two days since publication of the video have gone in deafening silence from law enforcement agencies, who react instantly in other cases that we all know. “None of our business,” the Presidential Press Secretary Peskov washes his hands of it. Whose business it is then? Or the right to execute those who they themselves found guilty was already transferred by the state to unknown citizens with a sledgehammer?” Vishnevsky says.

Deputies from Yabloko are also asking to check the circumstances of the recruitment of a prisoner to a private military company banned under Russian law.