The wife of a convicted drug dealer dubbed Russia’s “Walter White” has received a pardon from Vladimir Putin after her husband joined the mercenary Wagner Group, according to a report.
St. Petersburg physics teacher Diana Gribovskaya and her veterinarian husband, Dmitry Karavaichik, were convicted of manufacturing and distributing amphetamine in 2018. Karavaichik insisted that the drugs found in his apartment had been planted and that he had only sold fake narcotics in order to raise cash for developing prosthetic limbs for cats and dogs.
At trial, Karavaichik also claimed that police operatives had threatened him and his elderly mother with electric shock torture, Meduza reports. But he was nevertheless sentenced to 17 years in prison and Gribovskaya was handed a 16-year sentence, with their stories of seemingly leaving behind quiet lives to peddle drugs drawing comparisons in the Russian press with the meth manufacturing chemistry teacher protagonist of Breaking Bad.
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Reports had already emerged in January that Karavaichik had joined Wagner after an image was released showing the group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, alongside former prisoners who had been cleared of their convictions after fighting in the war in Ukraine.
Independent Russian investigative group Agentstvo (The Agency) identified Karavaichik as one of the ex-convicts in the photo. The BBC said the group—which also allegedly included a murderer who had drowned his friend—were also given medals “for courage” after completing a six-month stint on the frontline.
On Tuesday, a new report came out saying that Gribovskaya was also no longer serving her sentence in prison. According to St. Petersburg’s Rotonda Telegram channel, Gribovskaya’s father claimed that she was released thanks to a “presidential pardon.”
Her father, identified as “Captain 1st Rank Vladimir Gribovsky,” said the pardon came thanks to “the totality of evidence.” The channel also quoted him as saying that he didn’t want to discuss the details of his daughter’s case until Karavaichik returned, explaining that Karavaichik “came and went back to the front.”
The convicted drug dealer’s apparent return to the conflict would seemingly corroborate statements he made in January to the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. In an interview about his time in Ukraine, he said he planned to “work further” in Wagner and said he was eager to return to the frontline. “I've only been at home for 6 days, my eyes are still not used to it,” Karavaichik said. “Yes, beautiful girls, flowers, shops, all this lures. But still... it’s better there.”
Russia has been accused of using convicts to shore up dwindling troop numbers since the invasion of Ukraine began last year, with Prigozhin’s Wagner Group leading the unorthodox recruitment practice. Last month, the mercenary boss said he would no longer sign up prisoners into his organization—sometimes called “Putin’s private army”–with Russia’s Ministry of Defense instead allegedly taking over and allowing recruits from jails into its own ranks for the first time since the end of World War II.
