Igor Mangushev, The Infamous Russian Nationalist Shot Dead In Ukraine

After being shot in the head at close range in occupied Ukraine, the infamous army captain and mercenary Igor Mangushev passed away in a hospital, his friends have said.

Tatyana Mangushev, his spouse, called his death an execution. He was one of the founders of a mercenary outfit fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014 and served as the commander of an anti-drone team in the Luhansk region that was occupied.

Last summer, he appeared on stage while holding a man's skull.

Mangushev was captured on camera in August claiming that the skull belonged to a Ukrainian combatant who died protecting the Azovstal steelworks in the southern port city of Mariupol, BBC reported.

According to Mangushev, an extreme nationalist, 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 co-founded the private mercenary group Yenot (raccoon) after emerging from a neo-Nazi movement.

Later, it came to light that he had worked as a political strategist for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the most renowned mercenary leader in all of Russia.

The shooting at a checkpoint in the seized Ukrainian village of Kadiivka, some distance from the frontline, has sparked extensive discussion about who may have been responsible.

According to Russian reports, he was shot at close range with a 9mm bullet that was angled 45 degrees and blasted into the top of his skull. The killing is being looked into by Russian police, who have not yet provided any details.

He reportedly had the bullet lodged in his brain. Images of him in a hospital bed before his passing showed him there.

Pavel Gubarev, another radical Russian nationalist, claimed that everyone knew who was responsible for the shooting and noted that Prigozhin had temporarily gone quiet.

The 11-month conflict in Ukraine has stoked tensions among Russian extremists and energized their shadowy underground.

After the attack, Russia expert Mark Galeotti said it demonstrated that Russia was sliding back towards aspects of the 1990s, "when murder was a business tactic, and the lines between politics, business, crime, and war became near-meaningless".

Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin is a Russian oligarch and a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin was called "Putin's chef" because his restaurants and catering businesses hosted dinners that Putin attended with foreign dignitaries.

Prigozhin controls a network of companies including Wagner Group, a Russian state-backed mercenary group operating in Africa, Syria, and Ukraine; and three companies accused of interference in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections.