IStories: convict sentenced for murdering two women fights in Ukraine for PMC Wagner, receives Order of Courage

Konstantin Kiselev, a Russian convict who was sentenced for murdering two women, has been recruited by PMC Wagner, a paramilitary group, to fight in Ukraine and recently received an Order of Courage, a source related to the penitentiary told IStories, citing Kiselev’s wife.

Kiselev was sentenced for murder and negligent homicide. His verdict says that in 2016, he came over to her female friend’s place in a drunken state and attacked her visitor.

When the woman tried to intervene, Kiselev “beat her with a wooden stick multiple times, then stabbed her head, chest, and other parts of body with a knife no less than 29 times”. After this he “negligently” strangled the witness. The court sentenced Kiselev to 9.5 years in maximum security prison.

In 2022, he was recruited by PMC Wagner, a paramilitary mercenary group, and sent to Ukraine.

“Kiselev’s wife has told his cellmates that her husband received an order and the position of group commander because he was the only one from the unit who survived a shelling. According to the woman, the order was personally presented by Yevgeny Prigozhin [Vladimir Putin’s friend, an oligarch and leader of PMC Wagner],” IStories says.

She also shared a video of Kiselev speaking on how he is doing with his cellmates. In the video, the man says he lives in the trenches and is on the front line.

“I’m alive and not wounded; I’m fine. I’m the only survivor of 15 men. It’s okay, god helps,” says the man.

He also says that a part of his wages need to be transferred to his mother and the other part kept “in order to collect enough money to buy a new apartment in Krasnodar”.

On 13 November, a Telegram channel affiliated with PMC Wagner published the Nuzhin execution video.

In the video, Nuzhin says that he defected to Ukraine in September and was kidnapped from Kyiv in November. The man says he woke up in a basement and was told that he would “be brought before justice”. After this, Nuzhin’s head is crushed with a sledgehammer.

After the video was published, head of PMC Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin lauded it as a “fantastic director’s work”.

“We don’t know what it is or if it’s real. It’s none of our business,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the gruesome video.