Released from prison to fight Ukraine, they return to Russia to kill again

“Nobody used to lock their doors in the village at night, but now they lock them with a key, even during the day,” said a resident of Kutana, a Siberian village of 1000 people, declining in an interview to use her name out of fear that Savvinov might win another pardon if he was convicted and volunteered again to fight in Ukraine.

“Normal life” was gone, she added, noting that the aunt he killed had once been named a “teacher of the year” and awarded a prize from the Kremlin.

The Wagner Group began recruiting convicts in August 2022, with a promise of pardons in exchange for signing a six-month contract.

Similar experiences have scarred other cities and towns.

In Chita, near the border with Mongolia, a Ukraine veteran was sentenced last month to 14 years in prison for strangling a 22-year-old prostitute to death with his bare hands. In 2020, he was sentenced to 14 years for strangling and dismembering an 18-year-old girl.

In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a former Wagner mercenary who had served 15 years on theft and fraud charges was sentenced in February to 17 years for raping two schoolgirls, ages 10 and 12.

Near the south-west city of Krasnodar last spring, a young father, Kirill Chubko, the owner of a party business, and one of his employees stopped to fix a burst tire on a darkened road one night. They encountered three highway robbers who forced them to withdraw about $3000 from their banks before fatally stabbing them, according to a law enforcement report. The head of the gang had been sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2016 for preying on motorists but was released to serve in Ukraine.

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In 2017, Sergey Rudenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison for strangling his girlfriend to death with a belt. He earned his release when he signed on with Wagner to fight in Ukraine.

In April 2023, in Rostov-on-Don, in southwestern Russia, Rudenko, 34, went looking for an apartment. After arguing with the real estate agent over the proposed rent, he strangled her with a cloth cord, then stabbed her in the neck, a law enforcement report said. A district court sentenced Rudenko to more than 11 years in prison.

Local news reports did not name the victim, and several local residents, reached by telephone, said they knew nothing about it.

The Wagner Group began recruiting convicts in August 2022, with a promise of presidential pardons in exchange for signing a six-month contract. Before being disbanded last year after a failed mutiny against the Kremlin, the group said it had recruited more than 50,000 prisoners.

Many of those men died, some are still fighting and an estimated 15,000 ex-convicts have returned home, according to Olga Romanova, head of Russia Behind Bars, a nongovernmental organisation dealing with prisoner issues.

“A great many prisoners were back on the loose, and it became a big problem,” she said. The crimes seemed to belie the official narrative that the war is being fought to make Russia safer and that veterans will constitute a new elite, she added.

Crimes committed by veterans, whether from the Wagner Group or otherwise, often go unreported. National media outlets have mentioned only a few sensational cases. “It is a story about invisible violence,” said Kirill Titaev, a Russian sociologist working at Yale University who specializes in criminology. “It is a big problem for the society, but one they do not recognize.”

Russian commanders frequently deploy untrained convicts who join the Russian army as cannon fodder. Having survived harsh conditions in penal colonies and then a bloody war, they emerge back on the streets with zero rehabilitation.

Many of them return to their communities exuding a certain swagger, experts said. They view their service as having rehabilitated them, and usually have money to burn. Their base monthly pay from Wagner of about $3000 constituted a small fortune in much of Russia.

Those pardoned after committing particularly shocking crimes and then serving in Ukraine include a serial killer from Sakhalin known for cannibalism; a member of a Satanist sect convicted of ritualistic slayings; and a man who killed his former girlfriend by brutally torturing her for hours.

Last year, Putin played down the issue of pardoned convicts committing new crimes. “This is inevitable,” he said. “But the negative consequences are minimal.”

Relatives of previous victims and other locals are often vocal critics of releasing criminals. In Novosibirsk, the pardoned murderer of a used-car salesperson is now driving a taxi, despite efforts to get him dismissed.

Some lawyers accuse prosecutors of slow-walking cases against veterans in hopes that the local outcry will quiet.

“This is a new level of lawlessness,” said the lawyer for the widow of Chubko. The lawyer’s repeated requests to prosecutors for a copy of the pardon have been denied. “They keep telling us that it is a state secret,” he said. “We are fighting the investigation more than the accused.”

Chubko called his wife late on the night he was killed, telling her not to stay up, that some men he encountered on the road would help change his flat tire. The next morning, her husband, still not home, did not answer his cellphone.

However, his wife reached Tatyana Mostyko, 19, who worked for her husband. Mostyko told her in a strange voice that Chubko was not available, and the wife said that she figured out later that he had already been killed. Mostyko was being driven around to various ATMs and was soon murdered, according to an investigation report.

The widow said attending the arraignment of the three suspects made her sick to her stomach. (The other two had petty criminal records, and there was no indication that either had served in Ukraine, according to local press reports.)

“It was obvious that they had no regrets,” she said. Her husband had once remarked that recruiting soldiers from prisons was not normal, she added.

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“These people belong in prison,” she said. “I’m scared that they are among us. My kid and I walk in the park, and they might be walking there. It’s not like it’s written on their foreheads that they are criminals.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.