A murderer released from prison and pardoned by Vladimir Putin thanks to fighting in Ukraine, he was detained on suspicion of killing a 12-year-old girl and threw her body into the well.
An extensive search was underway for Karina Kabiková after she was reported missing by telegram on Tuesday morning.
49-year-old Andrej Bykov was detained when the body of a child was discovered Wednesday in a disused well near an abandoned building in Topki, a city in the Kemerovo region of Siberia, Russia. wrote the news agency RIA Novosti.
An investigation is currently underway to determine whether the child was sexually abused. “Signs of violence” were allegedly noted on the schoolgirl’s body.
Bykov was serving a 14-year sentence for the murder of an elderly woman in 2019. He allegedly hit the pensioner on the head with a bucket and strangled her with tape. He was to remain in prison until 2032.
But he was released after just three years behind bars as part of Putin’s plan to send convicted criminals to the front lines in Ukraine.
“They promised us mountains of gold”
He was also previously convicted of involving minors in criminal activity. In total, he has already been convicted at least six times, for example for theft and death threats, reports the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
“I committed my first crime in 1991 and have been in prison regularly ever since,” he told his Ukrainian interrogator on a capture video. “During short periods of freedom, usually two or three months, I did odd jobs. Then I committed another crime and went back to prison. I was imprisoned for murder and was supposed to be in prison until 2032.”
“On October 29, 2023, people from the Russian Ministry of Defense came to my penal colony IK-29 in the Kemerovo region, where I was serving my sentence. They started offering contracts to fight against Ukraine. They promised us mountains of gold…” continued Bykov.
Earlier this year, Ukraine exchanged him in a prisoner of war exchange and he was allowed to return home.
According to Radio Free Europe, the number of crimes committed in Russia by convicts recruited from Russian prisons who fought in Ukraine has been increasing since the beginning of 2023.
These are indicative estimates of Russia’s combat losses to date, the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.
Over the last day, Russian attacks have killed 8 civilians and injured 19 others. Russia attacked a total of 14 Ukrainian regions, while four of them reported victims, writes The Kyiv Independent newspaper.
People all over Ukraine cowered in the face of the Russian invasion and The Vietnamese community is no exception. Some of its members defend the invaded country with a gun in hand, wrote The Guardian. When Russia launched its large-scale invasion of the neighboring country more than two years ago, Tung Nguyen drove his parents from Chernihiv, where they lived, to the Polish border. Then he returned to Kiev and started working as a volunteer, carrying food and medicine to the then besieged city. Not long after, he decided to join the Ukrainian army and fight.
Nguyen belongs to the large but not very visible Vietnamese community in Ukraine. Some Vietnamese left Ukraine after the start of the war, but others remained – especially members of the younger generation, many of whom were born in Ukraine and hold Ukrainian citizenship. Nguyen grew up in Hanoi with his grandparents and came to Chernihiv to join his parents when he was 18. He studied in Kyiv, learned Russian and started working as a fitness trainer and bodybuilder. In 2019, he won the All-Ukrainian Championship and received citizenship to compete for the country on the international stage.
“Ukraine gave me a lot – I studied here, worked, married a Ukrainian. At the moment I can’t even say it’s my second country, it’s just my country.” he said in a Skype interview from the army base where he is currently staying. Last May, he was wounded during the Ukrainian retreat from Bakhmut, when he was picking up wounded soldiers from near the front under the cover of night. An artillery shell gave him cuts and severe internal bleeding, and he spent a month in the hospital. He returned to the front and was wounded again in December, requiring another two months of recovery. Now he is back in the fight.
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