🎧 In today's episode of The Journal podcast, marson_jr details the story of a Russian prisoner who agreed to fight in Ukraine for six months in exchange for his freedom—and how the deal went gruesomely wrong
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.
James Marson: He said that he was supposed to come out in 2027, but he said the Russian legal system is capricious. You can be scheduled to be released. But he said, if you do something that displeases somebody, they will find a way to get years added to your sentence. James Marson: He said, "There are two people who can get you out of here. One of them is God and he offers an accidental wooden box, and the other one is me."James Marson: It seems like a good offer in some ways, right? I think to a lot of convicts, it seemed like an excellent offer. I spoke with some ex-convicts who said that a lot of people were very enthusiastic about it because they saw it as a way not to have to spend so much longer in jail. They expected a quick victory.
James Marson: He came out, and he's not a big guy. He's kind of a small, quite slight guy. He looked very tired. He looked weary, but his mood seemed okay. Of course, the first question I asked him is how he was doing, whether he was comfortable speaking with me, whether it was his choice to speak with me, and all the kind of questions you ask of a prisoner of war. He seemed quite relaxed.James Marson: His story began in the Soviet Union when he trained to be a welder.
James Marson: The first night he was there, he was told that he had to go out in the group and go and pick up the dead after a battle. It was about eight or 9:00 PM. Then they started gathering two groups for picking up the dead. I signed up to that group, 17 people. At about 3:00 or 4:00, we were loaded into a pickup truck and taken into a wood.
Ryan Knutson: He ends up in the hands of the Ukrainians, but it's not clear whether he actually intended to surrender on purpose or he just got caught. And once he got caught, he said, "Oh, I always wanted to join the Ukrainian side." James Marson: I was in good contact with the Ukrainians who were holding him prisoner, and I said, "Look, we'll come back and see you again." We didn't know how things would play out, whether he'd be transferred to the custody of other Ukrainians, maybe transferred to Kiev, whether he'd be exchanged. But I was interested how his story would develop, and it turned out to develop in the most unexpected of ways.
James Marson: Nuzhin, I thought, I recognize that name. I clicked on the video without really focusing on what it was going to show, and I saw Nuzhin's face. His head is taped up to this brick post and he's saying who he is.James Marson: That he'd wanted to fight for Ukraine. And then suddenly, you see there's a guy behind him who swings a sledgehammer that smashes him in the head. And then as Nuzhin is lying on the ground, the guy smashes him again.
James Marson: It took me a while to put together the answers, but I got them in the end because I went in January, I was in Bakhmut with the unit who had been holding him captive in that village house, and I was able to ask them what had happened. They said that they'd eventually handed him over to Ukrainian military intelligence who were in charge of making prisoner swaps and that they had swapped him.
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