A prisoner believed to have been released to fight with the Wagner group mercenaries in Ukraine has been charged with committing a double murder upon his return to Russia.
Demyan Kevorkyan, sentenced in 2016 to 18 years in prison, was arrested this time for murdering a young man and a woman who were returning home from work. He denies the accusations.
The BBC has learned that there have been other recent cases of inmates released to fight in Ukraine who have later been charged with re-offending.
We have confirmed that the suspects in about twenty feloniesincluding rape and murder, are Wagner fighters who were released to serve in Ukraine.
Kevorkyan was one of 150 inmates recruited on August 31, 2022 when Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, He visited the jail where he was serving his sentence, according to a former inmate quoted on social media.
Sources consulted by the BBC stated that Kevorkyan was later seen in the town of Pridorozhnaya, in Krasnodar, in southwestern Russia, where he had his residence. He told his acquaintances that he had just returned from the battlefield in the Ukraine.
One of the people he is accused of murdering is 19-year-old entertainer Tatiana Mostiko. Her mother, Nadezhda, told the BBC: “She loved that job” and “when she came back from work she would laugh at what she had been doing, how she had entertained the children.”
April 28 was the last time Tatiana did the job she loved.
Her boss, Kirill Chubko, was driving her home when they had a flat tire and pulled over to the side of the road near the town of Berezanksaya.
Kirill’s wife, Daria, told local media that he called her to tell her he would be late, but not to worry because a group of young people had stopped to help them. It would be the last time she heard her voice.
The next morning, neither Tatiana nor Kirill had returned home. Fearing something was wrong, Daria called the police.
Then began a search of the field in which hundreds of volunteers participated. Tatiana’s mother undertook a journey by train and boat that would take her to the area from which small Siberian village where she lives.
“The worst was when we landed and I reconnected my phone. There were countless messages,” recalls Nadezhda. “You can imagine the panic I felt. I threw the phone away, because they could only mean one thing, that it was all over. It was an animal fear. I can’t describe it.”
three detainees
Three suspects were arrested, including 31-year-old Kevorkyan. The other two, Anatoli Dvoinikov and Aram Tatosyan, led investigators to makeshift wooden coffins near the remains of Kirill’s charred car.
He and Tatiana had been stabbed. Police said the young woman herself showed signs of having suffered a more violent death.
Dvoinikov and Tatosyan confessed to assault and murder, and they declared that Kevorkyan was the one in chargealthough he denies any participation in the events.
Nadezhda could not believe that Kevorkyan was free despite having been sentenced to 18 years in prison for a crime with disturbing similarities. “It shouldn’t have come out until 2028,” she says.
Kevorkyan was convicted of leading a criminal gang that robbed a car not far from where Tatiana and Kirill were killed. They robbed its occupants. One of them was killed with a firearm.
“On what basis did they release him?” Tatiana’s mother wonders.
Under Russian law, inmates must serve at least two-thirds of their sentence. “He should have served at least 12 years and he only spent six,” Nadezhda complains. She still does not assimilate that the brutal murder of her daughter could have been avoided.
who have been released
Video of Prigozhin in a Russian jail shows him telling inmates lined up that he prefers to recruit convicts who have killed more than once and criminals who have beaten up police officers or other officials.
“We need your criminal talents,” he says. And he warns them that 10 or 15% of them will return from Ukraine in “zinc coffins”.
But to those who survive six months at the front, he promises a return home, a bonus of 100,000 rubles (about $1,000), and, most importantly, a reprieve.
Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly confirmed for the first time in June 2023 that he had signed a presidential pardon for prisoners who had returned from the Ukrainian war.
How many have reoffended
Prigozhin claims that Wagner conscripted 49,000 inmates over the course of a year and only 32,000 returned. That’s a much lower ratio than he initially promised, but independent researchers believe the true number of survivors is even lower, about 20,000.
In a video from January welcoming mercenaries back from the front lines, Prigozhin tells them: “You were a criminal before; now you are a war hero!”
But some of these “heroes” have been accused of committing new crimes. The BBC has identified about twenty cases involving serious crimes.
Wagner’s founder claims that his mercenaries’ recidivism rate is 10 to 20% lower than that of other released convicts, but Olga Romanova, director of Russia Behind Bars, an organization that defends the rights of prisoners, the number it could be much higher simply because there is no record of the crimes.
The expert believes that this may be due to the new law that criminalizes anyone who discredits those who have fought in what the Kremlin calls a “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.
Families of other victims are also concerned about the convicts returning home.not only without punishment, but even more brutalized by their experiences in front.
Oksana Pekhteleva’s 23-year-old daughter, Vera, was stabbed more than a hundred times and then strangled with an electrical cable in an attack so violent it made headlines across Russia.
In June 2022, her ex-boyfriend, Vladislav Kanius, was sentenced to 17 years in a penal colony for her death. Less than a year later, Oksana couldn’t imagine him anywhere else. But she was surprised to see that her photos circulating on social networks they showed him holding a weapon and wearing a military uniform.
Oksana initially thought they were fake, but official confirmation came a month later that Kanius had been transferred to another prison in Rostov in southern Russia, a facility widely believed to be the concentration point. of prisoners who volunteer to fight in Ukraine.
When Oksana asked the court for the whereabouts of Kanius, the response was that they had not been able to locate him and that his whereabouts were a state secret.
Given where he was last seen and the photos in military uniform, Oksana thinks it likely he is serving in Ukraine and, if he returns alive, receive a presidential pardon allowing him to rejoin civilian life as a free man.
For a mother who spent months fighting for justice for her daughter’s death, this is a bitter pill to swallow. “It’s blasphemy,” he says.
“It is as if they have murdered us all. It’s a signal to all the scum out there: ‘do what you want, you’re not going to be punished.’
Many lawyers consulted for this report stated that they couldn’t do anything in these cases. No one can be tried twice for the same crime and the only way for them to go back to prison is to commit the crime again.
This has left relatives of murder victims like Tatiana’s terrified. Her mother believes that the most she can do is sign a petition that already has tens of thousands of signatures so that the alleged murderer of her daughter is this time sentenced to life imprisonment.
“I never talk about this at home… Tatiana was taken from me and the ground has disappeared from under my feet” he says, while trying to hold back tears.
“Of course I know who is responsible for my daughter’s death and I know it wasn’t her first crime… It’s hard for me… but I’m not stupid. I know they are not going to take it off the road for life.”
Additional reporting by Lorna Hankin.
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See original article on BBC