A Russian murderer and cannibal has been released to fight in Ukraine, the Agentstvo media outlet reported Thursday.
Denis Gorin, 44, from the Sakhalin region, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in a special-regime colony for murder in 2018.
In 2010, after he was released on parole from a 2003 murder sentence, he stabbed a man to death and ate his flesh after the killing, according to media reports.
Russia’s Criminal Code does not have a specific article referring to cannibalism.
He has killed at least four people in total.
Last month, Gorin posted a photo of himself on social media wearing what appeared to be a military uniform, the Sakhalin Against War Telegram channel said.
“He is in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the hospital, with a moderate injury,” his neighbor told the local RFE/RL affiliate Sibir.Realii.
It’s not the first case of a convicted killer being released to fight in the war in Ukraine to be reported this week by Russian media.
Nikolai Ogolobyak, 33, who was sentenced to 20 years for the ritualistic murder of a group of teenagers in 2008, was freed seven years early after spending six months in Ukraine.
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, and later the Defense Ministry, have recruited heavily from prisons for the war in Ukraine, offering pardons in exchange for military service.
The Kremlin on Wednesday said its policy of pardoning prisoners in return for their involvement in the conflict in Ukraine remained unchanged.
“Now everyone is studying the pardon lists very closely,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“But I repeat once again, we are talking about certain conditions that are related to being on the front line,” he said, adding: “There have been no revisions in this regard.”
