A total of 378 people were killed by returnee Putin fighters, while 376 suffered serious life-changing injuries from the outpouring of violence by the discharged soldiers
Troops returning from Vladimir Putin’s frontline have killed and maimed more than 750 people.
The sickening toll is from soldiers brutalised in the war, as well as murderers and rapists who the Kremlin dictator freed from jail to fight against Ukraine. Almost 200 people were murdered by returnees, according to court verdicts, while 112 died from grievous bodily harm inflicted by fighters after they were discharged on completion of their service.
There were another 63 cases of attempted murder, according to statistics compiled by Verstka independent media. A total of 378 people were killed by returnee Putin fighters, while 376 suffered serious life-changing injuries from the outpouring of violence by the discharged soldiers who are officially seen as “heroes” and the “new elite” in Russia.
In one case, pregnant Darya Steblina, 18, was killed by her boyfriend, Sergey Kozlov, 36, a convicted rapist and kidnapper freed to go to war under a Kremlin decree, who attacked her in a sauna. Career criminal Artem Sychev, 38, had nine separate convictions for crimes including murder, theft, robbery, fraud, car theft and assault yet was still deemed right to fight as a Russian soldier in Ukraine.
He returned from the war to stabbed to death his 37-year-old ex-wife Evgenia’s new lover, named Maxim, a court was told. Former soldier Konstantin Markov, 37, returned from the war to knife his ex-wife Tatyana to death, and shot her new husband in the face, wounding him. A day later Markov took his own life.
In another case, pardoned Putin war “hero” Viktor Chugunov, 35,, strangled a woman Kristina, 18, with a belt after an argument, and left her body in a snowdrift. He was sentenced to nine years for the murder – but didn’t serve it, because he was allowed to go to the war instead.
There has been a dramatic rise in sex crime in Russia during the war, blamed in part on returnees from Putin’s frontline. Wagner private army veteran Vladimir Aleksandrov, 40, a previously convicted sex criminal, was detained accused the raping and killing an 11-year-old schoolgirl, Nastya Yakina, in Nizhny Tagil.
After raping the girl, the suspect dumped her body in a basement where her corpse was gnawed by rats, it is alleged. Traumatised fighters in Putin’s war return home as ‘sexual sadists’, wives and girlfriends have been warned in a manual for partners.
“Changes may manifest themselves in temporary intolerance to touch and decreased sexual desire,” says the guide. “However, they can also be expressed in increased sexual arousal, the need for frequent sexual acts, and a predisposition to aggressive forms of sex.”
