A young man and woman from Russia’s Krasnodar region were brutally killed on their way home from work by a trio of former prison inmates that reportedly includes a violent criminal freed by the notorious Wagner Group to fight in the war against Ukraine.
Demyan Kevorkyan would be at least the third ex-Wagner inmate in less than two months to be accused of committing murder after receiving a pardon from the group and returning home.
Russia’s Investigative Committee announced Wednesday that it arrested three men in connection with the disappearance and murder of 19-year-old Tatyana Mostyko and 37-year-old Kirill Chubko, two event planners who vanished on their way home from work last Friday night. The car they were driving in was found three days later, burned and left at the edge of a forest near Berezanskaya. Investigators say they first found Chubko’s body, with “signs of a violent death,” and found the remains of Mostyko buried in a wooded area a short time later.
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The pair reportedly got a flat tire on their way home from a work event and pulled over to try and fix it. Chubko’s wife told local media he had called that night to say a group of guys who had also supposedly had car trouble offered to help fix the vehicle. But a short time later, Chubko stopped answering his phone.
Over the course of the next several days, hundreds of volunteers swarmed the area where Chubko and Mostyko were last seen to search for any trace of the two. Investigators, meanwhile, said their bank cards had been used to withdraw a combined total of around 180,000 rubles ($2,300).
Now, investigators say an opportunistic group of ex-cons just happened to be on the same road with the pair at the time of their car trouble, and they swooped in to rob them before killing them, disposing of their bodies, and torching the car.
Two other men in addition to Kevorkyan are accused of carrying out the double homicide, Anatoly Dvoynikov and Aram Tatosyan.
At a court hearing Thursday, Tatosyan said the group had “spontaneously” killed Chubko and Mostyko after Kevorkyan came up with the idea, according to local media.
“Demyan was in charge. I should have let the girl go,” Tatosyan was quoted saying after admitting to slitting her throat.
Dvoynikov told journalists in court that he had gone along with the double homicide because he was “afraid” of a certain person, presumably Kevorkyan.
Kevorkyan, described by investigators as the group’s ringleader, has denied wrongdoing and told the court that his “human rights” were violated in the course of interrogation.
But the events described in court sound eerily similar to crimes he was convicted of years earlier, when he allegedly created a gang known for attacking and robbing motorists, which in one case left a motorist dead.
Kevorkyan was hit with an 18-year prison sentence in 2016 for a slew of violent crimes including armed robbery and arms trafficking. Officials have not yet revealed how he got out of prison, but several independent Russian media outlets linked him to the Wagner Group. He reportedly signed a contract last year with Wagner to get out of his prison colony in the Ivanov region.
Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At least two other convicts who escaped their lengthy prison sentences by way of joining Wagner have been accused of murder since being released to enjoy their newfound freedom.
In March, Ivan Rossomakhin, 28, allegedly killed an elderly pensioner in the Kirov region shortly after returning to the same village where he got a 14-year sentence for an earlier murder. A few weeks later, another former inmate pardoned by Wagner was accused of fatally stabbing a developmentally disabled man in the capital of the self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia.
