Putin Keeps Sending Cannibal Convicts to Ukraine Front

A convicted murderer who killed at least four people and ate the flesh of one of his victims has reportedly been pardoned by Vladimir Putin, allowing him to join Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

Denis Gorin’s pardoning, as reported by Russian-language Telegram channels, follows reports that a Satanist jailed for two decades for cannibalism had also been freed so he could participate on the front lines of the Russian president’s full-scale invasion.

Russia is said to have been recruiting from prisons for its war effort for months, quashing jail terms in exchange for fighting in Ukraine. The policy has been ramping up in recent months, according to British defense officials.

At least 17 people who committed murders have been issued pardons to fight in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, Russian investigative outlet Agentsvo reported.

Gorin, 44, from Aniva in the far-eastern Sakhalin region, was convicted of murder three times, the first time in 2003. Seven years later, he was released on parole during which time he fatally stabbed the brother of the man with whom he was in pretrial detention.

Investigators said he admitted cutting the legs off the corpse which he washed, put in a refrigerator, and ate, according to Sibir.Realii, a news outlet aligned with Radio Free Europe.

Gorin was also convicted of other murders in 2011 and 2012 which he carried out with his brother, and in 2018 was given a 22-year sentence in a prison colony. However, the Telegram channel “Sakhalin Against War” reported that he has now been “freed from the colony and had gone to the war.”

The Telegram post was next to an image he had shared on social media wearing a military uniform with the pro-war Z symbol on his sleeve.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

It comes after news that Putin had pardoned Nikolai Ogolobyak, who was a member of a gang of Satanists from the city of Yaroslavl. In 2008, the gang killed and dismembered four teenagers.

Members of the sect fried and ate their victims’ organs at Ogolobyak’s apartment, according to court documents cited by Russian publication 76.ru, and in July 2010, he was sentenced on charges of murder, robbery, and desecrating a corpse.

Ogolobyak’s father told 76.ru that his son served for six months in Russia’s “Storm Z” detachment before returning home on November 2 after being wounded, adding that it is unlikely that he will be sent to Ukraine again due to his injuries.

The Kremlin faced a backlash after Putin pardoned Vladislav Kanyus, who was convicted in 2020 of murdering his 23-year-old ex-girlfriend, Vera Pekhteleva. He received a 17-year sentence in a maximum-security prison in Kemerovo, Siberia.