Russia's freed convicts - Families fear revenge as killers return from conflict

The 2020 murder of Vera Pekhteleva, by her ex-boyfriend, was so gruesome that even in Russia, where violence against women often goes under the radar, it caused a media outcry.

- Shaun Walker

Vladislav Kanyus spent hours torturing Pekhteleva before she died; neighbours repeatedly called police to report horrifying screams coming from the apartment, but officers did not turn up. At trial, it emerged that there were 111 injuries on Pekhteleva's body.

Last summer, a court in Siberia sentenced Kanyus to 17 years in prison for the murder. Pekhteleva's family members were disappointed that the judge had dismissed additional charges of rape and unlawful imprisonment, but breathed a sigh of relief that the murder charge alone would ensure Kanyus would be behind bars for 17 years.

Nine months later, in the middle of May, Pekhteleva's mother received two photographs from an anonymous account on WhatsApp. They showed a man in military fatigues, and were accompanied by a message: Kanyus is free, and fighting in Ukraine.

"I couldn't believe my eyes, I tried to calm her down, I tried to say it wasn't him, it was Photoshop. But we quickly realised it really was him," said Vladimir Pekhtelev, Vera's uncle, in a phone interview from the Siberian city of Kemerovo.

Kanyus, it seemed, was one of tens of thousands of Russian prisoners freed early to fight in Ukraine. The vast majority ended up fighting for Wagner, the private army run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in June went rogue and launched an armed mutiny that sent shockwaves through the Russian political system before it was aborted.

As part of the deal, convicts were told that if they fought for six months and survived, they would be allowed to go back to normal life without serving the rest of their sentences. Later, prisoners were also freed to fight for the regular Russian army and for other Wagner-like formations fighting with the Russians in Ukraine.