A Wagner mercenary who’d recently returned home to Russia after waging war in Ukraine was brutally beaten by a “professional boxer” and left in a coma, according to local media reports.
Alexander Kozhevin, 32, apparently dodged a lengthy prison term by joining the ranks of Russia’s notorious shadow army—he was sentenced to 11 years in 2020 for the large-scale sale of drugs, according to Yekaterinburg Online.
His mother, Lyudmila, expressed outrage that her son’s attacker was still “walking free” in an interview with the local news outlet, pointing the finger at an unnamed “professional boxer” who she said is well-known in the city of Artyomovsky, in the Sverdlovsk region.
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“He knocked him out and started kicking him in the head, breaking his occipital bone. It was the blow of a professional boxer,” she was quoted saying.
The fight reportedly happened in the city’s Victory Square, where many young people had gathered to socialize.
“They did an operation almost a day after the incident. A neurosurgeon from Yekaterinburg was called to the intensive care unit, Sasha was not transportable. They removed a hematoma and opened up his skull. Now he is in a coma, we are praying for him,” she said. “I asked the doctors: ‘What is his condition? Tell me the truth, will he live?’ They answer: ‘It’s an open question.’”
“They took his bank cards, his phone, and when he was beaten, they demanded that he give the PIN code for the card and password for the phone… I think they attacked him to rob him. Because he has a lot of money,” she said.
Kozhevin had reportedly returned from the war in late April after completing a six-month contract with Wagner. The group offers earnings of 240,000 rubles ($2,875) a month—and a pardon to prison inmates who agree to go kill Ukrainians.
He apparently followed the war after his return home, sharing a video on social media of Wagner raising the Russian flag in Ukraine’s Bakhmut last month.
Kozhevin is not the first ex-Wagner mercenary to meet violence upon returning home. Last month, a former Wagner fighter was shot dead in the Irkutsk region at his own homecoming party.
