A convicted rapist and killer freed and pardoned by Vladimir Putin to fight in his war against Ukraine has been jailed for the brutal murder of a 22-year-old woman.
Tsyren-Dorzhi Tsyrenzhapov, 42, was previously sentenced for killing and dismembering Ekaterina Skvortsova, 18, and throwing her severed head from a 12th floor window.
Despite the seriousness of his crime, Putin signed his pardon.
Soon after completing six months in the war, and being released from military duty, he killed the woman, 22, in Siberian village Ugdan. His latest victim was not named by law enforcement.
Chita District Court sentenced Tsyrenzhapov to 14 years in a maximum security penal colony.
Tsyrenzhapov was among the thousands of murderers, rapists and hardened criminals that have been released into Russian society after serving in Putin’s army. Reports indicate that dozens have committed new crimes upon their return home.
Convicted rapist and killer Tsyren-Dorzhi Tsyrenzhapov (pictured) has been jailed for the brutal murder of a 22-year-old woman
Tsyrenzhapov was previously sentenced for killing and dismembering Ekaterina Skvortsova, 18, (pictured) and throwing her severed head from a 12th floor window
Despite the seriousness of Tsyrenzhapov’s crime, Putin (pictured last week) signed his pardon. Soon after completing six months in the war, and being released from military duty, he killed the woman, 22, in Siberian village Ugdan
Tsyrenzhapov wore a hood and his face was covered as the woman judge announced his sentence.
Details of his earlier case were revealed, when he killed Ekaterina Skvortsova, described as a striptease club waitress.
The evil killer threw some of Ekaterina’s dismembered body into a local river.
Then he drank all night and next day hurled her severed head along with other body parts and her bloodstained clothes out of a 12th floor window in his rented flat.
The macabre sight was seen by playing children and teenagers.
Local schoolboy Igor Shalaev, then 15, said: ‘It was me and my friends who found the body parts. It was very scary.’
The victim’s mother Svetlana Skvortsova, 48, told how she went to identify the body at a morgue.
‘I went in, and saw this cart full of lumps of meat,’ she said. ‘My legs were like jelly. I did not understand anything.
‘They could have put her on a table and covered the body parts with a sheet. It was completely inhumane to see her like this.’
She and ex-husband Igor paid £215 for the gruesome body parts to be sewn together for her funeral.
Tsyrenzhapov had served less than three years of a 14-year prison term when Putin released him to fight in Ukraine.
Tsyrenzhapov wore a hood and his face was covered as the woman judge announced his sentence
Details of his earlier case were revealed, when he killed Ekaterina Skvortsova, (pictured) described as a striptease club waitress
The evil killer threw some of Ekaterina’s dismembered body into a local river. Then he drank all night and next day hurled her severed head along with other body parts and her bloodstained clothes out of a 12th floor window (pictured) in his rented flat
Tsyrenzhapov (pictured) had served less than three years of a 14-year prison term when Putin released him to fight in Ukraine
Putin’s drastic recruitment drive began in mid-2022 after he and his supposedly mighty armed forces had been pushed back from Kyiv in the opening months of the war, and again by Ukraine’s lightening summer counteroffensives.
It quickly became apparent that Russia’s initial invading force of around 190,000 was nowhere near enough to fulfil the Kremlin’s goal of subjugating all of Ukraine.
So, as Putin’s forces were pinned back in the east of the country, the Russian military set about recruiting thousands of convicts from prisons to swell its ranks.
Reports suggest Wagner, the Russian paramilitary group led at the time by Yevgeny Prigozhin, widely recruited from prisons in July 2022, swelling its ranks by 49,000.
The warlord, who would later go on to stage an attempted coup against the Kremlin and – two months later – die in a fiery plane explosion, was seen in footage personally appearing in prisons around St. Petersburg. He said: ‘We need your criminal talents.’
By October 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defence is reported to have followed suit. It is understood that Wagner, and later Russia, offered prisoners a simple deal: serve in the army for six months, and leave a free man with a bonus of 100,000 roubles.
Prigozhin told prospective recruits that 10 to 15 percent of them would return from Ukraine ‘zinc coffins’. He also said that Wagner’s convict soldiers would be used as shock troops – leading attacks against Ukraine’s defences.
The reality, according to captured Wagner soldiers, was that they were used as ‘little more than cannon fodder’ – ordered to throw themselves against defensive positions in great numbers to wear down Kyiv’s stockpiles and find defensive weak points.
Skvortsova’s body was found by playing children and teenagers who described the sight as ‘very scary’. Pictured: Ekaterina Skvortsov
The victim’s mother Svetlana Skvortsova, 48, told how she went to identify the body at a morgue ‘saw this cart full of lumps of meat’. Pictured: Ekaterina Skvortsova
Thousands of convict soldiers were deployed in the ‘meat grinder’ Battle of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian media reported the convicts were ‘dumped onto the front after 2-3 weeks of poor training and used as cannon fodder’ by Wagner’s more elite units.
Any soldiers who attempted to flee, or refused orders, were executed.
According to Prigozhin himself, of the 49,000 prisoners recruited by Wagner, only 32,000 returned. Independent researchers believe the real number to be even lower, around 20,000, according to the BBC.
This would suggest anywhere between 35 to 60 percent of the soldiers recruited from prisons by Wagner were killed in Ukraine.
It was not just Wagner recruiting prisoners, either. In April 2023, it emerged from Ukraine about the creation of Storm-Z units by the Russian MoD. After receiving just ten to fifteen days of training, these units were bolted on to regular Russian forces suffering from fatigue.
But unlike regular Russian forces – many of whom were forcibly conscripted in a separate recruitment drive by Moscow in 2022 – the surviving Wagner recruits have been allowed to return home after just six months.
This has meant thousands of hardened criminals being released into Russian society after witnessing first-hand some of the most brutal fighting on European soil since the end of the Second World War.
Desperate for soldiers for his faltering war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin in 2022 recruited troops out of Russian prisons, promising pardons to thousands of convicts. Pictured: Wagner Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks to convicts dropped off to fight in Ukraine
Thousands of convict soldiers were deployed in the ‘meat grinder’ Battle of Bakhmut (pictured), where Ukrainian media reported the convicts were ‘dumped onto the front after 2-3 weeks of poor training and used as cannon fodder’ by Wagner’s more elite units
It has since emerged that dozens of the pardoned criminals, including paedophiles, murderers and even cannibals, continued to commit crimes once they returned home.
Last month, BBC reported that the former prisoners are no longer being offered a pardon and freedom after six months.
Instead they face tougher conditions and, according to a member of the Storm V convict unit, prisoners now ‘have to make it until the end of the war’.
He said that ‘before you could wing it for six month’, but has now warned: ‘If you sign up now, be ready to die.’
