A man pays tribute to the Wagner Group’s late chief Yevgeny Prigozhin at an informal memorial near the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, October 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

A former Wagner group mercenary and convicted murderer beat a woman into a coma and sent video footage to her family, the Intsident Novosibirsk Telegram channel said on Friday.

The victim’s son, who shared the footage with the channel, said the attack occurred on the evening of 1 October in the city of Novosibirsk, in western Siberia. The woman left home at about 5pm that day, and her family was unable to reach her in the evening.

Her family received a video at about 1am in which a man is seen beating her and making threats. The woman is bleeding profusely. The man then dragged her outside unconscious and left her on the pavement, according to her son.

“My mother is currently in intensive care. They had to make a hole in her skull and she is in an extremely serious condition, in the last stage of a coma,” he said.

The man was immediately detained and charged with attempted murder, according to the victim’s son. He said his mother’s assailant was a former Wagner fighter who had been recruited to go to fight in Ukraine at a penal colony where he was serving a sentence for stabbing a woman to death. His identity has not been disclosed.