A Russian criminal who was sent to fight in Ukraine made a devastating call to his wife, telling her he was about to be executed by Army commanders.
Viktor Sevalnev, 43, was reportedly shot and his skull smashed with a sledgehammer after high-ranking officials blamed him when troops in his unit abandoned the frontline.
The brutal killing is thought to have happened minutes after he made the call home, with his widow Lilia Ayupova saying he called her from the car as he was driven to his execution.
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Speaking to human rights campaigner Vladimir Osechkin, she recalled: "He said the car had arrived [for him].
"They said get ready for a shooting.
"He called me when he was in the car already."
When the campaigner asked Ayupova why her husband was going to be shot, she said: "He explained that his [troops] had run away."
Sevalnev had previous military experience and so was made commander of a unit.
However, he was wounded and taken to hospital for treatment – giving his troops an opportunity to flee.
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"He said [the desertion] wasn’t his fault, because he was in hospital, but…[he got the blame]," Ayupova, 55, added.
The heartbroken widow was then told on December 1 that her husband had died in the Donetsk region of Ukraine after sustaining "a shrapnel wound on the body".
The Russian defence ministry also told her his skull had been smashed during his killing.
Sevalnev, who was jailed for grievous bodily harm, was one of the tens of thousands of prisoners released to fight in Putin's war in Ukraine following the warmonger's partial mobilisation on September 21.
Other criminals released include rapists, paedophiles and "hundreds" of murderers.
And Sevalnev isn't the only convict to have met a gruesome fate.
Yevgeny Nuzhin, who deserted his post, was killed in a similar extrajudicial execution and was struck on the head with a sledgehammer while his killing was filmed.
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Neither Sevalnev nor Nuzhin's bodies have been returned to their relatives.
Human rights activist Olga Romanova claims to know of around 40 so-called "executions" of convicts who had been released from jail and recruited in Putin's war.
It is thought the sledgehammer is a preferred execution method for getting rid of deserters or troops blamed for failures so their commanders can get off scot-free.
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