Russian Ekaterina Skvortsova was found murdered in 2019. The man convicted of the murder was recruited as a soldier for Putin. After finishing his service, he is said to have killed again. Photo: Privat/Chita.ru
More and more Russian soldiers are returning to Russian society. It causes the homicide statistics to rise.
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Former mercenary of the Wagner group, Denis Stepanov, is arrested in Siberia, suspected of double murder. The Wagner group recruited 50,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine, and pardoned them after six months of service. Murder rate in Russia increases for the first time in 20 years, which may be consequences of traumatized soldiers and alcohol consumption. Several cases of murder have been committed by former soldiers in the Wagner group after their return to Russia. view more
It is a former mercenary from the Wagner group who is now in the police’s spotlight.
Denis Stepanov has been arrested by Russian police and is suspected of a double murder in the village of Yermakovskoye in Siberia.
Stepanov is believed to have killed a 68-year-old woman and her 35-year-old daughter by setting fire to their house on Tuesday this week.
In that case, it won’t be the first time he has hurt someone: In 2021, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for grievous bodily harm. He is said to have embarrassed a man with the metal door of a fireplace.
From prison, Stepanov was recruited by the Wagner group and sent to Ukraine to fight in November 2022.
Wagner soldier Denis Stepanov has previously been convicted of serious violence. Now he is again in the police spotlight for having killed two women. Photo: Private /
Wagner and Putin looking for soldiers
Because last summer things went badly for the Russian soldiers in Ukraine. They had had to withdraw from northern Ukraine, and their soldiers were dying in droves.
It was then that the infamous mercenary group Wagner took on a central role in the war. Their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin traveled around Russian prisons and began recruiting prisoners.
50,000 prisoners must have been recruited, the Wagner group has claimed.
If they would fight for him for six months, they would be pardoned. Many of the soldiers he recruited were murderers and served long sentences.
Many of these criminal soldiers were used to storm Ukrainian positions around the city of Bakhmut, resulting in the deaths of many.
Those who survived have, after six months of service for Putin, now returned from the front line and back into Russian society. As free men.
President Vladimir Putin said last Friday that Russian prisoners who died in Ukraine had made amends in the eyes of society.
– Everyone can make some mistakes, they had. But they have given their lives for the fatherland, and they have made amends, Putin said at the meeting with Russian soldiers fighting on the southern front in Ukraine.
But while Putin protects his men, they continue to shake Russian society.
Russian investigators are working in the apartment where the 34-year-old former Wagner soldier Rudenko killed an innocent woman. Photo: Criminal police in Rostov-na-Donu
Because another Russian man is also now on trial.
In 2019, Tsiren-Dorji Tsirenzhapov killed 18-year-old Ekaterina Skvortsova in the eastern region of Chita in Russia. According to the verdict, the man must have strangled the woman to death, before beheading her.
Then the body was dismembered and dumped in a river.
For the bestial murder, the man was sentenced to 14 years in prison, writes local Russian media.
Then came the war in Ukraine, and Putin’s enormous need for men skyrocketed.
From prison, Tsirenzhapov was enlisted in Wagner, before being sent to Ukraine. After completing his combat service, he could return to Russia as a free man, pardoned for his murder.
But on 13 September he allegedly killed a woman again, this time a 22-year-old. This woman is also said to have been suffocated.
Putin on a train trip in 2009. Photo: RIA NOVOSTI / Reuters / NTB
The Russian newspaper The Moscow Times reports that the Russian soldiers who have now returned to society are behind at least 27 murders.
The number of murders in Russia is now rising for the first time in 20 years, reports the Russian newspaper Kommersant. Last year, 7,628 people were killed, an increase of 4 percent from the previous year.
The war in Ukraine is pointed out as one of the causes, with the consequences of increased alcohol consumption and traumatized soldiers returning home.
It is the Russian mercenary Sergei Rudenko who has been convicted of the murder in Rostov. This is reported by several Russian media. Photo: Social media
Another murder that has made headlines in Russia recently is the murder committed by 34-year-old Sergei Rudenko.
In September, Russian prosecutors sentenced the man to eleven years and six months in prison for the murder of a 52-year-old woman.
According to the verdict the 34-year-old is said to have tried to rent an apartment in Rostov, but he and the woman are said to have ended up in an argument about the rent.
The argument is said to have escalated, and the 34-year-old is said to have stabbed the woman, before strangling her with a shoelace. He then ran off with the woman’s mobile phone.
The man will too earlier having been convicted of murder before he became a soldier in the Wagner group.
Death has also struck the Wagner peak.
Because at the end of August, the private plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin mysteriously crashed outside Moscow. It happened after the group carried out a failed coup attempt before the summer. Putin himself denies having had a hand in the game.
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Published: 15.10.23 at 02:36
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2023-10-15 00:36:53
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