Russian Satanic cannibal cult murderer pardoned after fighting in Ukraine war

A Russian Satanist whose cannibalistic cult dismembered teenagers in a string of ritual murders before eating their hearts has been pardoned after fighting in Ukraine.

Nikolai Ogolobyak, 33, was sentenced to 20 years in a high-security penal colony in 2010 for the killings in the Yaroslavl region, north-east of Moscow.

But he is now back at home with his mother after being seriously injured while on a six-month tour in Ukraine with the Russian army.

“He became disabled after he was injured,” his father told the Russian news outlet 76.RU, adding that he fought in the Storm-Z assault units made up of prisoners.

“He can walk, but his injuries are serious. He’s not working yet, he’s recovering.”

Ogolobyak’s father also denied local media reports that his son was seen on the streets of Yaroslavl.

“They’re writing that he’s walking around drunk dressed in black on the other side of the Volga, yelling, screaming,” he said. “It really p—– me off.”

It is not known when Ogolobyak joined the Russian army, where exactly he fought or what regiment he was in.

The Kremlin said that it had not changed its policy of pardoning prisoners in exchange for fighting in Ukraine following local media reports on Ogolobyak’s release.

“Now everyone is studying the pardon lists very closely,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said.

At least 17 convicted murderers have been freed by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after fighting in Ukraine – Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP

Ogolobyak was 16 when he joined an occult gang in 2006 with six other Russian teenagers.

New members were initiated with the blood of sacrificed dogs and cats, which were then tied to an inverted cross erected on a piece of abandoned land behind a cemetery.

Two years later, the group turned its attention to human sacrifices.

On 28 June 2008, friends Olya Pukhova and Anya Gorokhova – who knew one of the cult members, Alexey Chistyakov, from school – were drinking with the group at Ogolobyak’s apartment.

Prosecutors said that the gathering was planned by Konstantin Baranov, the cult’s founder, who had fallen in love with a girl called Ksenia Kovaleva and intended to initiate her into the group using human blood.

Once drunk, the group took the girls to the clearing behind the cemetery, where they lined up around a fire in the shape of a pentagram.

The Satanists then pounced on the two girls, stabbing, beheading and dismembering them, reportedly reciting incantations over their bodies as they cut off their genitals.

They took pictures on their mobile phones with the victim’s severed heads, and fried and ate the girls’ hearts and tongues, prosecutors said.

Kovaleva, Baranov’s love interest, was then smeared in the victims’ blood before their dismembered bodies were buried in pits nearby.

‘Ogolobyak counted the blows’

The following day, case files said, the group gathered at the clearing again, this time with inductee Alexey Soleviev and two other teenagers who would become the gang’s third and fourth victims: Andrei Sorokin, who had previously refused to be initiated, and Varya Kuzmina, his girlfriend.

The pair were beheaded, dismembered and buried in pits, with their clothes burnt on a ritual fire.

“According to witnesses, when Sorokin was killed, Ogolobyak counted the blows out loud,” said Elena Smirnova, who prosecuted Ogolobyak. “He counted until he hit 666.”

The four victims’ parents had initially thought that they were away at a rock festival but when the festival ended in early July and their children did not return, they informed police.

The mutilation and dismemberment of the victims meant that a lengthy investigation was required to identify which body parts belonged to each victim.

But the cult members confessed and were sent to trial in February 2010.

At their sentencing, the group were said to have behaved “arrogantly”, smiling and demonstrating no remorse for their brutal crimes.

Ogolobyak was the only adult at the time of the trial and received a 20-year sentence.

He was due to be released in 2030, prior to his pardoning.

The other six gang members were sentenced to between two and 10 years, the maximum that a child can receive under Russian law, and have since been released.

‘Atone for crime on battlefield’

At least 17 convicted murderers have been freed by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after fighting in Ukraine.

There have been numerous reports of pardoned murderers killing again after returning to Russia from the war’s frontlines.

The Kremlin acknowledged the use of prisoner recruits to fight in the conflict earlier this month but said that convicts could “atone for their crime on the battlefield with blood”.

On Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said that prisoners are now providing most of Russia’s fresh manpower for the war.

“At this stage, the Russian army has made prisoners the main source of replenishment of losses on the battlefield,” he said.

Government statistics and rights groups suggest that Russia has freed up to 100,000 inmates and sent them to fight in Ukraine since launching its offensive in February last year.

The practice was initiated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late boss of the Wagner mercenary group who died in a suspicious plane explosion in August, exactly two months after he led a failed mutiny that presented the biggest threat to Putin’s two-decade rule.

Prigozhin promised recruits that they would receive presidential pardons after six months of service in Ukraine.

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