0:05

Yevgeny Nuzhin killed a man during a

0:07

robbery in the 1990s, and

0:09

he'd spent two decades in a Russian prison.

0:12

He'd carved out pretty much as

0:14

decent a life as an inmate who's been

0:16

in jail for 20 years could expect in Russia.

0:18

He'd managed to get ahold of a cell phone. That's

0:21

our colleague James Marson.

0:22

He was generally respected

0:26

by other prisoners, the prison guard.

0:28

He'd met a woman online and had married

0:31

her and spent some time with her. So

0:34

he had as decent a life as one could perhaps

0:36

imagine.

0:38

Nuzhin, who was in his mid-50s,

0:41

had five years left on his sentence, but

0:43

he wasn't confident he'd actually be released.

0:46

You know, he said that he was supposed to

0:48

come out in 2027, but he said the Russian legal

0:52

system is capricious. So you

0:55

can be scheduled to be released. But

0:57

he said, if you do something

0:59

that displeases somebody, they will find a way

1:01

to get years added to your sentence.

1:05

Then

1:06

one day last summer, a man

1:08

walked into the prison and offered him

1:10

and many other prisoners a way

1:12

out. So the offer is that

1:14

you come and fight in the war for

1:17

six months, after which you

1:19

are out of jail.

1:22

The man was the founder of a Russian paramilitary

1:24

organization called the Wagner

1:26

Group. He said, there are

1:28

two people who can get you out of here. One

1:31

of them is God, and he offers

1:33

an exit in a wooden box. And

1:35

the other one is me. Nuzhin

1:39

decided to take the deal and fight

1:42

for Wagner in Ukraine. It

1:44

seems like a good offer in some ways, right?

1:47

And I think to a lot of convicts, it seemed like

1:49

an excellent offer.

1:51

I spoke with some ex-convicts who

1:54

said that a lot of people were very

1:56

enthusiastic about it because they saw it as a way not

1:58

to have to spend so much longer.

1:59

In jail, they expected a quick

2:02

victory, but for a lot of them, things didn't

2:04

turn out that way.

2:09

Welcome to The Journal, our show about

2:11

money, business, and power. I'm

2:14

Ryan Knudsen. It's Monday,

2:16

May 1st.

2:21

Coming up on the show, one prisoner's

2:24

choice in what it says about

2:26

Russia's war in Ukraine.

2:37

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3:13

Our colleague James met you at Genni Nuzion

3:15

last fall. Not long after Nuzion

3:18

accepted that offer to fight for the Russians. So,

3:22

I was writing a completely different story. I

3:25

was intending to write a story about how

3:27

aerial drones, you

3:29

know, the kind that you would use to photograph,

3:31

say, a sports event or a wedding or something like

3:33

that, how those drones were

3:35

being delivered from Western Europe

3:37

to the front line.

3:39

While reporting that story, James traveled

3:41

to a small village in eastern Ukraine where

3:43

he struck up a conversation with a Ukrainian soldier.

3:47

And after a while he said, oh, would you

3:49

like to meet our Wagner prisoner? Their

3:51

Wagner prisoner was Nuzion. James

3:54

followed the soldier to the back garden where Nuzion was

3:57

being held. He

4:00

sat down with him and asked him how he ended

4:03

up there. He came out and

4:05

he's not

4:07

a big guy. He's kind of a small, quite slight

4:09

guy. He looked very tired. He looked

4:12

weary. But his

4:14

mood seemed okay. Of course,

4:16

the first question I asked him is how he was doing, whether

4:18

he was comfortable speaking with me, whether

4:20

it was his choice to speak with me, and all the kind of questions

4:23

you ask of a prisoner of war. And

4:25

he seemed quite

4:28

relaxed. He was very relaxed.

4:30

He

4:33

was not a big guy, but he was a big guy. He was

4:35

a big guy.

4:39

You know, his story began in the

4:41

Soviet Union when he was trying

4:44

to be a welder. He then told

4:47

me about how he was in

4:49

the interior ministry's internal

4:51

troops, like a security force, working

4:54

other jobs, but he just hadn't been getting paid by the

4:56

end of the 1990s. I've seen Mr.

4:58

Fuchen in so many cases. So

5:00

he turned to crime. Then a robbery

5:03

went wrong. He ended up killing

5:05

someone. And he got caught. He

5:07

got sentenced to jail.

5:09

He later made an attempt to escape

5:11

from jail, which was very short-lived,

5:13

and that got some years added to his sentence.

5:19

Nuzhen is one of tens of thousands of prisoners

5:21

in Russia who have been recruited to fight in the war,

5:24

prisoners who have agreed to fight or paid a salary.

5:27

How important are these men

5:30

to Russia's war effort? These

5:33

men have been absolutely critical for Russia's war

5:35

effort. Back last summer, the

5:37

Russian effort in Ukraine was

5:40

wobbling. There

5:41

were gaps in the front lines. The

5:43

Russians had been on the back foot,

5:46

and they'd expended a lot of men and

5:48

equipment trying to advance,

5:51

and the Ukrainians were pushing forward. And

5:54

by bringing in tens of thousands of convicts, what

5:56

the Russians were able to do was to

5:59

shore up.

5:59

and the defensive lines, but also in some

6:02

areas to advance in these kind of brutal,

6:05

brutal assault.

6:07

On August 25th, Nuzion and other

6:09

recruits left the prison and began

6:11

training. For a week, they

6:14

were housed in a form of prison. They

6:16

were trained

6:17

using rifles without bullets, which

6:19

he said to me, well, you know, it's sure

6:21

that they didn't really trust us. And they

6:24

were told very clearly about what their role

6:26

would be. Nuzion told me that they were told

6:28

they would advance on command. And if

6:30

they remained in the trench and didn't advance, no

6:32

matter what was facing them up ahead, they would be shot

6:34

dead

6:35

in the trench by their own side.

6:38

After their week-long training was finished, Nuzion's

6:41

unit deployed to eastern Ukraine. The

6:44

first night he was there, he was told that he

6:46

had to go out in a group and go and

6:48

pick up the dead after

6:50

a battle. It

6:53

was about 8 or 9 pm. Then

6:56

they started gathering two groups for picking up

6:58

the dead. So I signed

7:00

up to that group, 17 people. At

7:03

about 3 or 4 o'clock, we were loaded into

7:05

a pickup truck and taken to a wood.

7:07

On

7:10

his unit's second night out, Nuzion

7:13

said he made a decision. There

7:16

are some kind of gray areas in this

7:18

story where we can never be entirely

7:20

sure exactly what happened because some of

7:22

it is, you know, what happened in between two front

7:25

lines. Some of it is what was going on in his own

7:27

head, which we can

7:29

perhaps never know. What

7:31

he said to me was that he was driven to

7:34

near the front lines, near Bakhut,

7:36

which is a city in eastern Ukraine, that

7:38

was under heavy assault by Wagner at that point.

7:42

And what he told me was that he,

7:45

having planned all

7:47

along to escape and fight

7:49

on the Ukrainian side, he

7:52

took the stretcher that he was carrying

7:54

and he walked, he walked to Ukrainian

7:56

positions and surrendered.

7:59

why he wanted to do that. His

8:02

explanation was that we

8:05

used to live in one big country, the Soviet Union,

8:08

that we shouldn't be fighting, that

8:11

the Putin regime has

8:14

brought us to this war, which we shouldn't be having. He

8:16

mentioned that he had relatives even in

8:18

Ukraine. I

8:21

told him, I've done Ukraine no wrong. I've

8:24

not fired a single shot. My

8:27

goal was just to switch sides and fight for

8:29

Ukraine.

8:29

James

8:33

asked Nuzion if he'd ever go back to Russia. I

8:39

can't. Not while Putin is in power. Even

8:42

this interview will be treated as treason.

8:49

We'll be right back.

8:53

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9:27

The Ukraine's The Ukraine's

9:30

The Ukraine's The Ukraine's

9:31

After Nuzion surrendered, he told James

9:34

that the Ukrainians had been treating him well.

9:38

He told us that he had been

9:40

given basics like shoes,

9:43

clothes, a towel, things like that.

9:46

He was being fed decently. He

9:48

even struck up something of a relationship with

9:51

one of the Ukrainian soldiers. And they

9:53

used to kind of talk together, spend some time

9:55

together. But the Ukrainians

9:58

were skeptical of his story.

10:00

I asked the Ukrainian group that were holding

10:03

him captive and they said we don't trust him. They said

10:05

we don't believe that he wants to fight for us. So

10:08

he ends up in the hands of the Ukrainians,

10:10

but it's not clear whether he actually intended

10:14

to surrender on purpose or he just got caught.

10:16

And once he got caught, he said, oh, I

10:18

always wanted to join the Ukrainian side.

10:22

Exactly, exactly. I later

10:24

asked a couple of people who have

10:27

been in jail with him in Russia what they

10:29

thought about this and they said

10:30

that they thought that this was something he was making

10:33

up on the fly as kind of a way to stay

10:35

alive, as a way to survive.

10:38

But I asked his son about that and he

10:41

said that in a way it makes

10:44

sense that his father would oppose the

10:46

government that kept him in jail for more than 20 years

10:48

of his life. So

10:51

in that way, that would be him wanting

10:54

to oppose the government that had done that to him

10:57

would make sense.

11:03

Nuzion stuck to his story.

11:05

And in September, a few days before

11:07

James met him, he even appeared in an interview

11:09

on YouTube with a Ukrainian journalist.

11:12

He

11:19

told about his life and then explained

11:21

how he was hoping to fight for the Ukrainians.

11:24

The video on YouTube went viral.

11:27

Now it has more than a million views.

11:30

James and Nuzion spoke for hours. And

11:32

when James had to leave, he told Nuzion

11:35

he wanted to stay in touch. You know, I

11:37

was in good contact with Ukrainians who were holding

11:39

him prisoner. And I said,

11:41

you know, look, we'll

11:43

come back and see you again. You know, we didn't know how

11:46

things would play out, how they would, whether

11:48

he'd be transferred to the custody of other

11:50

Ukrainians, maybe transferred to Kiev, whether

11:53

he'd be transferred to Kiev. And I was interested

11:55

in how, you know, his story would

11:57

develop. And it turned out that he was going to

11:59

be in touch with the

11:59

and had to develop in the most unexpected

12:02

of ways.

12:03

On a Sunday morning last November, James

12:06

was scrolling Twitter when he saw something

12:08

disturbing and gruesome.

12:11

And I see there's, you know, a lot of people, people

12:14

are tweeting about Wagner

12:17

guy, and then I

12:19

see it, the guy's surname, Nuschen, I thought,

12:22

well,

12:23

this was a couple of months later. The

12:25

video was posted on Telegram by a channel

12:28

close to the Wagner group. It

12:30

was titled Hammer of Vengeance, and it showed

12:33

Nuschen apparently back in the hands

12:35

of the Russians.

12:36

So I thought, oh yeah, Nuschen, I thought I recognized that name.

12:38

So I clicked on the video without really

12:40

focusing on what it was going to show, and I saw Nuschen's

12:43

face, and he was,

12:45

his

12:47

head is taped up to this kind of

12:49

brick post, and

12:52

he's saying who he is. And

12:54

then he said, you know, that he'd wanted

12:56

to fight for Ukraine, and

12:59

then suddenly you see there's a guy

13:01

behind him who swings a sledgehammer that smashes him

13:04

in the head, and

13:08

then as Nuschen is lying on the

13:10

ground, the guy smashes him again. The

13:14

journal wasn't able to independently verify the

13:16

authenticity

13:16

of the video. And I think that's

13:19

a good question. The journal wasn't able to independently verify

13:21

the authenticity of the video. What

13:24

did you think when you saw this video? Oh,

13:27

I was shocked, because this is a guy

13:29

I'd interviewed a month and a half, maybe

13:32

two months before, and

13:35

I didn't know the circumstances that it led from,

13:37

you know, him being sitting in front of me in the back garden

13:40

of a village house in Ukraine,

13:43

to him being what

13:45

would appear to be a cellar with his head taped

13:47

to a brick post.

13:49

And were you able to find out the answers to those questions?

13:52

What did happen to him? How did he end up back

13:54

in Russian hands? So

13:58

it took me a while to put together the arms. but

14:02

I got them in the end because I went

14:04

in January. I

14:06

was in Bakhmut with the unit who

14:10

had been holding him captive in that village

14:12

house. And I was able to ask them what had

14:14

happened. And they said that they'd

14:17

eventually

14:18

handed him over to Ukrainian military

14:20

intelligence who were in charge of making

14:23

prisoner swaps and that they had swapped

14:25

him.

14:26

They told them Nuzhyn had been given back to the Russians

14:29

in exchange for 23 Ukrainian prisoners.

14:32

Ukrainian intelligence said Nuzhyn agreed

14:35

to be exchanged but declined to give

14:37

more detail. I asked them

14:39

at that point, how do you feel

14:42

about having made that swap? Because

14:45

it must have been clear to them

14:47

that they were swapping someone who

14:50

had said that he'd

14:52

wanted to fight for the Ukrainians. So he had

14:55

essentially said that he wanted to betray

14:57

Russia

14:58

on camera and that video was well known

15:00

at that point.

15:01

And the officer who was in

15:03

charge of this unit who'd been holding him captive and had

15:05

given him over to military intelligence for the swap

15:08

said, it's wrong from a human

15:10

standpoint but 23

15:12

Ukrainians returned to their families and that's a good

15:15

thing. So he saw it in a very clear

15:17

way.

15:19

Did Russia or the Wagner group

15:21

say anything about this video

15:25

and what appeared to be an execution? So

15:28

a Kremlin spokesman was asked about this

15:31

video on a conference call with reporters and he said,

15:33

it's not about business.

15:35

And Yevgeny

15:38

Prigorgian, the founder of Wagner

15:41

released several statements around this incident.

15:44

One of them said, the Russian

15:46

people, Russians genetically smell betrayal.

15:50

Nuzhyn betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades

15:52

and betrayed intentionally. The Russian people

15:54

and I spoke with

15:57

Anuzhyn's son Nikita. His

16:00

son blamed the Ukrainians. He said

16:02

he was their prisoner. And so they're responsible

16:04

for him. They handed him over and they

16:06

knew this would happen. So he blamed them. But

16:09

at the same time, the family

16:11

have not been given his father's body back.

16:16

James says that of the tens of thousands

16:18

of prisoners who've agreed to fight, it's unclear

16:21

how many have survived long enough to actually

16:23

secure their freedom.

16:25

The US government estimates that since December,

16:27

more than 20,000 Russian fighters have been

16:29

killed nearly half of

16:31

whom were Wagner soldiers.

16:33

The US says many of those killed were convicts.

16:40

What does this story say about the

16:42

state of the war in Ukraine? In

16:45

Russia, the main tool for getting

16:47

man onto the battlefield is a combination

16:49

of despair, hopelessness, coercion.

16:53

These are the main things that appear to be motivating

16:55

Russians to join the Russian army. Either

16:57

those who are being mobilized, those

17:00

who are joining because they don't have any

17:02

decent prospects, including

17:05

those who are in jail and don't see

17:08

a better way out than going to try their luck

17:10

on the front lines.

17:30

That's all for today, Monday, May 1st. The

17:32

journal is a co-production of Gimlet and

17:34

The Wall Street Journal. The theme

17:36

music in today's episode is remixed by Peter

17:38

Leonard.

17:42

Thanks for listening, see you tomorrow.