‘This animal is going around schools’

A Russian prisoner-turned-soldier, convicted of murder and accused of raping minors, teaches children about patriotism

After returning from the war in Ukraine, many Russian soldiers are invited to speak about their experiences at schools and patriotic events for children. Among them is Nikita Semyanov, a 35-year-old from Novosibirsk, who was recruited to fight in the war while serving a nine-year prison sentence for murder. Multiple women have also accused Semyanov of sexually abusing minors and of physical assault. Nevertheless, he’s continued appearing at various patriotic gatherings for children since his return from the front in February 2024. The independent outlet Holod dug into Semyanov’s past and learned why local groups organizing the events are still turning a blind eye to the allegations against him. Meduza shares an abridged version in English.

In February 2024, Novosibirsk’s Garin-Mikhailovsky Library posted about a recent recitation competition for schoolchildren called “Dedicated to the Defenders of the Fatherland.” Among the judges evaluating the children’s performance of patriotic poems was Nikita Semyanov, a veteran of the war in Ukraine. The post refers to him as a “special military operation” participant and reconnaissance group commander.

Shortly after, Semyanov visited a local school and spoke with the children there. Heroes of Russia – Novosibirsk, the local chapter of Russia’s Association of Heroes, published photos from the meeting on social media. The next day, Semyanov’s ex-wife, Polina, wrote a post revealing that Semyanov had killed her father.

Nikita Semyanov strangled his father-in-law in April 2021, after the two got into an argument. Alexander Makarenko was listed as missing for over a month. His body was found in May, and police quickly closed in on Semyanov and arrested him. Semyanov confessed to the murder, saying that the pair had started arguing while working together in the garage. As Makarenko was leaving, Semyanov grabbed him by the neck, put a plastic bag over his head, and strangled him with a wire. He then loaded the body into a car, took it to a plot of land he owned, and buried it in a pit.

In May 2022, a court found Semyanov guilty of murder and sentenced him to nine years in a strict regime prison colony. However, a few months after the verdict, he volunteered to fight in the war. After Semyanov was wounded, he returned to Novosibirsk a free man.

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‘A sexual predator’

In early March, an acquaintance of Semyanov’s named Ulyana published a thread on X (formerly Twitter) in which she called him a pedophile and a murderer. “Now this animal is going around schools and blowing up smoke up your children’s asses,” she wrote.

According to her, Semyanov used to teach guitar to teenagers, and he coerced some of his students, girls aged 12–15, into having sex with him. Semyanov’s ex-wife Polina, seven years his junior, was also a minor when the two first got involved. “I met Nikita when I was 10,” she told Holod. “He worked at my school. We slept together when I was 13, and I moved in with him at 15. I gave birth at 17, and then when I was 18, we divorced.”

Ulyana said Semyanov tried to coerce her into having sex with him when she was around 14, and then again, about a year later:

On my boyfriend’s birthday, I ended up at his place again. There were a lot of us, my friends were there and in general, everyone was having fun. When my drunk boyfriend passed out, Nikita called me outside to talk. There, he shoved me into the dog kennel and started threatening me: either I give him a blowjob, or he’d strangle me and bury me, and no one would ever find me since the house was his. I was depressed, and I told him just to kill me. He got angry and dragged Polina over, made her suck him off in front of me.

Semyanov taught guitar at a local school in the 2010s, Ulyana told Holod. According to her, he’d let underage female students come stay with him if they’d gotten into fights with their parents:

I heard him say there’s a price for this, and if you weren’t willing to pay, you could pack up your things and get out. They didn’t complain about it, or maybe he hushed them up. In general, at that time, a lot of awful things were just a normal part of reality. He himself always said that his parents would help and cover for him and that he wouldn’t suffer any consequences.

Semyanov’s ex-wife Polina told Holod that while she was living with him, he constantly humiliated her, sexually assaulted her, and beat her: once he even broke her nose. She claimed that after the divorce, he used threats to force her to relinquish her parental rights in court. “I ran away from him with almost nothing,” she said. “I left everything. I had nowhere to go. I was afraid of being judged by my parents and afraid for myself. He made it very clear that I couldn’t see my child, and that if I tried to, he’d ruin my life.”

After the divorce, Polina went to prison on drug possession charges. Friends say that her daughter currently lives with Semyanov’s parents and that he likely sees her. Semyanov later remarried, and then again divorced. A family friend, Oksana (name changed), said that he regularly drank in front of the children and brutally beat his second wife, Irina (name changed). According to Semyanov’s acquaintances, he would make violent statements about his ex-wife Polina, saying she should be “chained in the basement and left to die there.”

“He’d scold his daughter, yell at her, and hit her,” Oksana added. “He justified it by saying her looks reminded him of his ex-wife, Polina. That she was just as nasty and vile and therefore deserved to be beaten and screamed at.” Oksana also told Holod that Irina found child pornography on Semyanov’s computer, which he later claimed to have deleted.

‘An exemplary father’

Not everyone believes that Nikita Semyanov killed his father-in-law and raped underage girls. Under posts accusing him of crimes, people started leaving comments in his defense. “Who’s writing this? Information has to be verified; you can’t just write a post based on what one person said. He’s an exemplary father, raised his daughter on his own. You can see how much she loves her dad. And as for what happened, you have to know the family’s situation and all the details,” wrote a user named Vera Osipova.

Osipova told Holod that her child was in some classes with Semyanov’s daughter. She described him as a “good father” and a “positive and friendly young man.”

The Association of Heroes, which organized Semyanov’s school appearance, told Holod that it doesn’t do its own background checks on members of the Russian military:

The Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation sends us the soldiers’ contact information. […] As for the horrors and accusations, apparently there is some tragic family history that the Association of Heroes has nothing to do with. We organize meetings with lots of soldiers.

Holod was unable to get in touch with Nikita Semyanov. He told Novosibirsk journalists that he wasn’t going to comment on the situation and that he didn’t recommend publishing anything on him. He blamed his ex-wife Polina for allegedly “abandoning a five-month-old child and disappearing for 10 years.” The Association of Heroes confirmed that Semyanov refuses to talk to the press. A representative there told local journalists that he is an active volunteer in patriotic organizations and, therefore, “from a moral standpoint, everything is fine.”

If you or someone you know has been a victim of rape or sexual assault, please reach out to one of the following resources for support:

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (for U.S. readers)

Rape Crisis Network Europe (for E.U. readers)

Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime (for Canadian readers)

Reporting by Marina Kiryunina for Holod