'Releasing a monster': how some of Russia's most notorious killers have walked free from jail to fight in Ukraine
Families of murder victims tell of their despair as killers freed to fight in Ukraine.
By Nina Nazarova.
Warning: this article contains descriptions of violence which some readers may find disturbing.
In the past six months convicted killers in some of Russia’s worst murder cases have walked free from jail after serving only a fraction of their sentences, in order to fight in Ukraine. Those that survive get a presidential pardon. It has left victims’ families with a huge sense of injustice and despair.
When photographs started to appear on social media this May of Vladislav Kanius, outside in the open air, in military uniform, with a gun in his hand, Oksana Pekhteleva thought they must be fake.
It didn’t occur to her that the man who just ten months earlier been sentenced to 17 years in prison for the brutal murder of her daughter Vera, could be anywhere other than in jail. But she was wrong.
A month later Pekhteleva received official confirmation that Kanius had been transferred to a prison in Rostov, in southern Russia. A place widely believed to be a staging point for Russian prisoners who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine.
No-one can tell her the current whereabouts of the man who stabbed her 23-year-old student daughter more than 100 times before strangling her with an electric cable in an attack so violent it made headlines across Russia.
But given his last location and the photos in military uniform it’s likely that Kanius is fighting in Ukraine, and if he survives, it’s also likely that he’ll be given an official pardon and can return to civilian life a free man.
For a mother who spent months battling for justice for her daughter, it’s a bitter blow.
“This is blasphemy,” she says. “It’s like all of us have been assaulted.”
BBC is blocked in Russia. We’ve attached the story in Russian as a pdf file for readers there.
No longer behind bars
The Pekhtelev family are not alone.
Since the summer of 2022, thousands of Russian prisoners have been offered a way out of jail by volunteering to fight in Ukraine.
The first rounds of recruitment were carried out by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group. When they announced they were ending prison recruitment in February 2023, reports indicated that the Ministry of Defence had taken up the baton.
During this time, many Russian families, who have lost loved ones in the most brutal of circumstances, have learned that the men convicted of their murders are no longer behind bars.
Natalia Nechetnaya found out that one of the men who killed her daughter Maria was no longer in prison when she stopped receiving compensation payments from his prison earnings.
Maria Nechetnaya, a 19-year-old chemistry student was raped, tortured and beaten to death in a two-hour attack in the small town of Obninsk in 2016.
The level of violence was so shocking that the case again made headlines across Russia.
Local mayor Vladislav Shapsha offered a big reward for information and eventually in 2019, two local men, brothers Vladislav and Aleksandr Korobenkov were convicted of Maria’s murder and sentenced to 19 years in a high security prison.
When the compensation payments stopped, Maria’s mother made enquiries. She learned that in October 2022 Vladislav Korobenkov had left prison as a volunteer with the Wagner Group and was on his way to the frontline in Ukraine.
He had served less than two years of his sentence.
Racially-motivated murder
Irina Gavrilova spent six months trying to find out what had happened to the man who was supposed to be serving a 19-year jail sentence for stabbing her 17-year old son Timur to death in a racially motivated attack.
Vitaly Vasiliev, 22, a far-right extremist, admitted he had gone out onto the streets the night of the murder looking for a “non-Russian” to kill.
Timur, who grew up in Azerbaijan, and had moved to Volgograd with his mum, was on his way home to his student hostel at the local medical university where he was studying to be a dentist.
A gentle boy who played the violin and liked spending time at home, Timur was attacked from behind and stabbed 20 times.
Like the murders of Vera Pekhteleva, and Maria Nechetnaya, Timur’s death received a lot of media coverage and the local Volgograd governor offered a million roubles to anyone who could help find the killer.
Vasiliev was identified by his own brother who recognised him from CCTV footage circulated by the police after the murder.
“He didn’t just kill my son, he killed me too,” says Irina Gavrilova who took Timur’s body home to Azerbaijan and visits his grave every day.
Less than a year after the trial, a friend alerted Irina to a Telegram post claiming that Vasiliev had killed himself in a jail in Rostov.
Irina tried to find out more and put in numerous official requests for information but no-one could tell her anything. It seemed that he just had disappeared.
Finally, an official from the local penitentiary agency took pity on Irina and told her off the record that Vasiliev had been transferred to Rostov and most probably had joined the Wagner Group. The official said if he survived six months at the frontline, he would be free to go home.
Irina was shocked: “I said, but how can this be? He is a monster, how can he be released?”
The official shrugged: “I’m afraid it’s not up to me to decide.”
Presidential pardon
In April 2023 Anna Boltnyuk received an official letter from the prison authorities confirming that the man who raped and murdered her daughter Yana in 2014 had been pardoned by President Putin.
Yevgeny Tatarintsev, was convicted in 2019 in yet another case which made national headlines for its shocking brutality.
Yana, an 18-year-old design student from Kaluga was on her way home when she was attacked by Tatarinstev, his brother Vladimir, and a third accomplice, all of whom had been drinking and smoking synthetic cannabis.
Yana’s mother fought tooth and nail to keep the case in the news, and after a high-profile investigation in which the police ran checks on more than 11,000 people, the Tatarintsev brothers were eventually arrested, convicted and sentenced to 18 years in jail.
They were sent to a maximum security prison in Kaluga region - the very same one where Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was filmed in September 2022 giving a rousing speech to inmates and offering them pardons if they joined up to fight in Ukraine.
Soon after this Anna Boltnyuk learned that Yevgeny Tatarintsev had been transferred to a prison in Rostov region, and the following spring, presumably after surviving a six month stint in Ukraine, she was informed that he was free.
Anna Boltnyuk did not want to speak to the BBC, but a source familiar with the case told us that in desperation she had travelled to Moscow, to the Kremlin, to beg the president’s office to overturn the pardon.
She was met with sympathy and told that her case will be looked into.
But soon afterwards she received an official letter telling her that “all questions concerning the despatch of citizens to take part in the special military operation fall within the competence of the Russian Ministry of Defence”.
Powerless to intervene
For the mothers of Vera, Maria, Yana and Timur, the knowledge that their children’s killers have in effect got away with murder, is an almost unbearable injustice.
“This is a signal to all scum out there – do whatever you want, you won’t be punished,” says Oksana Pekhteleva.
Lawyers who agreed to speak to the BBC about these and other cases admit they are powerless to intervene.
“If a person falls under an amnesty, there’s nothing we can do,” said Ruslan Chikhardanov, who acts for Timur Gavrilov’s mother, Irina.
“A person can’t be tried twice for the same offence.”
As part of his sentence, Vitaly Vasiliev was supposed to pay Irina Gavrilova 1.7 mln roubles compensation for killing her son. Ruslan Chikhardanov says he even tried to get the Wagner Group to pay the money to her directly out of his salary, but he has not had a reply and there is nothing a court can do.
The only way Vasiliev and other killers like him, could return to prison is if they offend again.
In June 2023, Vladimir Putin confirmed publicly for the first time, what everyone already knew, that he had been signing presidential pardons for prisoners who had returned from the front. He also claimed that only 0.4% of the pardoned convicts reoffend.
There are no official statistics to support this, leaving relatives of murder victims, and their wider communities, to ask what will happen when people convicted of the worst kind of crimes return home not only unpunished but further brutalised by their experiences on the front line.
“They won't come back as normal people,” says Irina Gavrilova. “They will be even more violent, even more blood-thirsty.”
Abridged and edited in English by Kateryna Khinkulova and Jenny Norton.
Read the full story in Russian here.
