Sergey Kozlov in court. Photo: the Omsk court’s press service

A court in the Siberian city of Omsk has sentenced a former Wagner Group mercenary to 19 years in prison for murdering his pregnant 18-year-old girlfriend, the court’s press service announced on Monday.

Sergey Kozlov was found guilty of murdering a pregnant woman “with particular cruelty” and ordered to pay 1 million rubles (€10,000) to the victim’s father in moral damages.

According to the investigation, Kozlov beat his girlfriend Daria to death at a party in October 2023 after she broke his speaker. Eyewitnesses said they saw Kozlov jump on the pregnant girl’s stomach and scream that she was unworthy of being the mother of his child, after which he stepped on her neck and started pressing down with his shoe.

The description of the victim’s 138 injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, a broken nose, a brain contusion, a ruptured liver, and blunt abdominal trauma, took up several pages, Russian business daily Kommersant reported last Tuesday.

Kozlov, 36, initially denied his involvement in the crime but later partially admitted guilt. He has previously been convicted of theft, grievous bodily harm and robbery, Kommersant reported, adding that he was recruited from prison by the Wagner Group some time after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where he was awarded a medal for courage during his service.

Convicted criminals in Russia have been offered the chance to get an early release from prison and an eventual presidential pardon by agreeing to fight in Ukraine. The recruitment was first carried out by the mercenary Wagner Group until the Russian Defence Ministry took over following the mutiny led by Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023.