Man serving 17-year sentence for murdering his ex-girlfriend released from penal colony to fight in Ukraine. Witnesses dread retribution.

Vladislav Kanyus brutally murdered his ex-girlfriend Vera Pekhteleva in 2020, shortly after the 23-year-old undergraduate from Kemerovo decided to leave the violent relationship. In July 2022, a court sentenced him to 17 years in a penal colony.

Last spring, when browsing the social media, Pekhteleva’s mother spotted a photo of her daughter’s killer in military fatigues and holding a weapon. After the victim’s family inquired about Kanyus and his case with the Federal Penitentiary Service, they learned that the convict had been released from the penal colony on April 28, 2023, because he’d agreed to take part in combat in Ukraine.

According to the human rights advocate Alyona Popova, who discussed the case with TV Rain, Kanyus was due for an appeal hearing when he opted to go to war instead. This means that he will be pardoned without an appeal process, Popova said.

“Can someone explain to me how we’re supposed to live with this?” Pekhteleva’s mother despairs. The convict, she believes, can now easily “cross the border and kill each and every one of us [who testified against him] out of vengeance.”