A former fighter from the Wagner mercenary group who was recruited from prison last year has been accused of stabbing six people to death after returning home to Russia following a tour of duty in the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.
Officials in Russia's northwestern region of Karelia said on August 2 that the bodies of five men and a woman with stab wounds had been found in two partially burned houses located next to each other in the village of Derevyannoye a day earlier.
Police said they have detained two suspects with criminal records -- 38-year-old Maksim Bochkaryov and 37-year-old Igor Sofonov. Sofonov was recruited by Wagner last year from a penal colony where he was serving time for theft, robbery, armed robbery, and attempted murder.
In the spring of this year, he returned to his native Karelia after he was handed clemency as part of his contract to fight with Wagner in Ukraine.
Sofonov and Bochkaryov will be held in pretrial detention for at least two months on murder charges. The two have pleaded not guilty.
It is not the first case of former Wagner mercenaries recruited from jails and prisons across Russia to be accused of committing serious crimes after completing tours of duty in Ukraine.
In May, police in Russia’s southwestern region of Krasnodar Krai arrested Demyan Kevorkyan on suspicion of killing two persons.
In 2016, the 31-year-old Kevorkyan was sentenced to 18 years in prison for robbery and creating a criminal group. After he spent several months fighting against Ukrainian armed forces for Russia earlier this year, he was fully exonerated and returned home, where he was subsequently accused of committing murder.
In May, police in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk arrested a man on suspicion of raping two underage girls. Media identified the suspect as former Wagner mercenary Sergei S., giving only the first letter of his last name.
Wagner's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in late June that 32,000 former inmates recruited by his group from penitentiaries had returned home after being granted clemency as part of their remuneration for taking part in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.