Mediazona reports that over a thousand Russian citizens have been murdered or beaten to death by Russian soldiers since 2022, with the perpetrators evading punishment by returning to the front. Where sentences are passed, these are often more lenient than would otherwise be the case, with the victim’s criticism of Russia’s war against Ukraine on several occasions treated as an ‘extenuating circumstance’.
Mediazona’s study has looked in many cases at professional soldiers, not the huge numbers of convicted criminals, including many murderers, recruited from prison colonies. A separate study recently found that just in the first six months of 2025, as many as 25 thousand men had criminal proceedings terminated, or sentences waived by agreeing to kill Ukrainians.
Russia began recruiting convicted prisoners in the summer of 2022. This was initially presented as Yevgeny Prigozhin recruiting for ‘his’ Wagner private military company’. The latter had, however, worked closely with the Russian defence military in both Ukraine and Syria, and the recruitment was clearly in agreement with the Kremlin, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, was, after all, responsible for signing the prisoners’ pardons. By 2023, the defence ministry had taken over, and, as of 2025, there have been reports that men who do not want to agree to fight are subjected to beatings and / or threatened with additional sentences if they don’t sign the military contract.
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While killers, rapists and perpetrators of other violent crimes may never spend more than a few days in detention, Ukrainians, abducted from occupied territory, as well as Russians who speak out against the war are being sentenced to 15-20 years, or more, on fictitious ‘terrorism’, ‘sabotage’ or ‘spying’ charges, or imprisoned for 7 years or more for telling the truth about Russian war crimes. Unlike in most cases where a sentence was for a real crime, such political prisoners have zero chance of being released early, except in inter-state prisoner exchanges. It has also become tragically clear that even gravely ill Crimean Tatar or other Ukrainian political prisoners will not be released even where Russian legislation prohibits their imprisonment.
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Russia is notorious for treating fighters as cannon fodder, and the chances are clearly high that men who avoid long sentences or prosecution by agreeing to fight against Ukraine will be killed in action. The Russian defence military has long done away with the original deal offered to convicted prisoners which saw many able to return, free and ‘pardoned’, after a relatively short amount of time. They will, however, be released if badly injured, with this also applying to those first-time confessed killers, even those accused of horrific crimes.
They include Alexander Gook, a 49-year-old lawyer from Sverdlovsk oblast, who almost certainly killed and dismembered 42-year-old Olga Soroka and murdered her six-year-old son. Olga’s head was found in a compost heap, with Gook believed to have dumped other parts of her body in plastic bags and dumped them, together with the child’s body, in a rubbish bin.
The victims’ families are appalled that Gook was never even put on trial with the ‘case’ terminated soon after charges were laid against him.
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In an article entitled ‘Machine guns issued to maniacs’, Siberian Realities described how, for example, two multiple killers had been taken on by Russia’s defence ministry. The latter, in 2025, signed a contract with 64-year-old Vagan Sarafyan, who was awaiting trial for a double murder, with this only a couple of years after he served an 18-year sentence for another murder.
Serial killer Yuri Gritsenko was a year younger when, in 2024, he signed a contract with the defence ministry, with this enabling him to end a 22-year sentence slightly early. Because of his physical state of health, he was not sent into battle but added to a medical evacuation unit. No concern appears to have been felt about the wisdom of sending a person who had already served a 9-year sentence for one murder when, in 2001, he attacked at least 15 women in Moscow and Moscow region, killing four of them. The attacks were savage and carried out with a hammer.
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