The killing of Vera Pekhteleva, less than four years ago, is still fresh. The 23-year-old was brutally murdered by the boyfriend she had dumped, who had previously expressed his intention to kill. He ambushed her as she was returning to retrieve her belongings, raped her, left 111 injuries from his fists and knife on her body, and strangled her to death with an iron cable.
The police's response, or rather, lack of response, to the 2020 murder in Kemerovo, Siberia, shocked the region. Pekhteleva's ex-boyfriend loudly tortured her for over three hours, and the neighbors called the police at least seven times, but to no avail.
Two police officers were sentenced to short suspended prison terms for "negligence" following Pekhteleva's killing. The murderer, Vladislav Kanyus, received a 17-year sentence in July 2022, but today, he is back in Kemerovo as a free man.
The victim's parents learned he was free at the beginning of November after contacting the courts. Kanyus received a presidential pardon in April, likely when he joined the Russian army to fight in Ukraine. Russia's Ministry of Defense was ramping up its prison recruitment, a recruitment method previously reserved for Wagner mercenaries. As the saying goes, after spending a few months on the front lines, he "atoned for his crimes with blood on the battlefield."
Pekhteleva's parents were devastated, worried and powerless. The legal case was still pending review by the Supreme Court at the request of the plaintiffs when Kanyus was released. He even stopped paying the monthly compensation he owed them. "There are hundreds of us in the same situation," said Oksana Pekhteleva, Vera's mother.
The exact number is unknown, but the independent and exiled media outlet Agentstvo revealed on November 19, 17 cases of murderers who returned from Ukraine after being pardoned by Vladimir Putin. Since there is no public list, the number is likely to be a conservative estimate. The 17 are just the stories that are shocking enough or well-known for local news sites to report on them.
Agentstvo's compilation reads like a scene from a horror movie. It includes cases of young girls who were raped and then killed, or elderly women murdered for meager gains. The vast majority of the victims are women killed by hardened psychopaths or drifters suffering from alcoholism. The outlet detailed dismembered, burned and decapitated bodies, some thrown into the river. Many of the murderers are repeat offenders, and in most cases, the crimes that put them in prison occurred as recently as 2018, 2019 and 2020.
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