Convicted murderer recruited by Wagner PMC returns to Russia from front line and becomes suspect in another killing • The Insider • RIMA

Convicted murderer recruited by Wagner PMC returns to Russia from front line and becomes suspect in another killing

A resident of the village of Novy Burets in Russia’s Kirov region, convicted to 14 years in prison for murder in 2020, has become a suspect in another killing. The man, Ivan Rossomakhin, was recruited from prison by the Wagner PMC and pardoned after returning from the front line in Ukraine.

State investigators claim that in 2019, Rossomakhin killed a fellow villager who tried to chase him away from her land plot. The man then beat and strangled her to death, dragging the corpse into a bathhouse, where he “decided to stage an accident” by putting her face down on a rake. A month later, Rossomakhin also robbed a passerby in the town of Vyatskie Polyany. He was later found guilty of murder and robbery.

On March 21, Rossomakhin returned to his native village, and since then, according to the Vyatskie Polyany TV channel, “kept fellow villagers in fear by threatening their lives.” One day, the man walked around the village drunk, holding a pitchfork and an axe, shouting: “I'll kill everyone, I'll cut up your whole family.” Vyatskie Polyany also broadcast a report that showed Rossomakhin smashing the windows of two cars with an axe. A local police officer said the man was detained on March 22, and then arrested for five days for minor hooliganism.

Local police department head Vadim Varankin promised the frightened locals that Rossomakhin would be sent back to the front on March 28, but the man appears to have remained in Novy Burets.

According to reports from Baza and local outlet Omutninskie Vesti, after the Vyatskie Polyany news broadcast, the man was again detained on suspicion of murdering a woman. The woman's son said that his mother had been beaten and stabbed multiple times. Law enforcement is investigating the incident.