The clearly deranged boyfriend of Gretta Vedler, a Russian model who famously accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a “psychopath,” has reportedly confessed to murdering her and keeping her corpse hidden for a year inside a suitcase, according to Russian media reports.
Vedler, 23, vanished soon after criticizing Putin in January 2021, and friends quickly grew concerned for her safety after she continued to post on her social media account without responding to their calls.
“Given the fact that Putin went through a lot of humiliation in childhood, he could not stand up for himself due to his [slight] physical form, it is not surprising that he left after law school and joined the KGB,” Vedler wrote in a now-removed social media post, according to the Mirror. “Such people are timid and fearful from childhood, afraid of noise and darkness, strangers, so traits such as caution, restraint, and lack of communication are developed early in their character. I can only assume, in my opinion, a clear psychopathy or sociopathy is seen in him.”
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She disappeared shortly after the post, which was apparently removed by Russian censors.
This week, Vedler’s erstwhile boyfriend, Dmitry Korovin, confessed to strangling her to death after the two argued not over politics but over money in Moscow in February 2021. He said he continued to post old photos on her social accounts so as not to arouse suspicion that she might be dead, according to authorities.
Since her disappearance, many Russian activists expressed concern that she was either taken into custody or worse after her anti-Putin post, which coincided with a crackdown on dissidents in the country. Her friend Evgeniy Foster, a Ukrainian blogger who lives in Kharkiv, was fearful that Putin had ordered her demise, posting a number of accusations on his Instagram account.
Instead, Korovin told Russian authorities—who published a video of his confession in Russian media—that he slept by her corpse for three days after strangling her to death and then bought a suitcase to dispose of her body, which he kept in the trunk of his car for nearly a year. It is unclear when he abandoned the car, but authorities found it this week after being tipped off by a friend of Korovin who filed a missing-person report, reportedly at his insistence.
The suitcase with Vedler’s body was found some 300 miles from Moscow. Vedler’s friends said she told them that Korovin was “abusive” and angry.
