Notorious Russian nationalist Igor Mangushev shot dead in Ukraine

Notorious Russian army captain and mercenary Igor Mangushev has died in hospital, days after he was shot in the head at close range in occupied Ukraine, his friends have said.

Mangushev’s wife Tatyana described his killing as an execution.

He commanded an anti-drone unit in occupied Luhansk, but had also been one of the founders of a mercenary group fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014.

He took to a stage last summer holding a man’s skull.

In a video posted on social media in August, Mangushev was filmed saying the skull belonged to a Ukrainian fighter killed defending the Azovstal steel works in the southern port of Mariupol.

An extreme nationalist, Mangushev said Russia was not at war with people, but with an idea of Ukraine as an “anti-Russian state”, and it did not matter how many Ukrainians died.

Mangushev emerged from a neo-Nazi movement to co-found private mercenary group Yenot (raccoon).

He was later known to have collaborated with Russia’s most notorious mercenary boss,

Yevgeny Prigozhin, as a political strategist.

The shooting has prompted widespread speculation about who might have carried out the