Convicted criminals sent to war are returning home — and unleashing violence on civilians. Torture, rape, murder, and impunity follow the SVO veterans back to Russian cities. This episode investigates how pardons, early releases, and war contracts have turned former inmates into a growing threat inside Russia.

Famous Russian singer Larisa Dolina is being forcibly evicted from a luxury five-room apartment in Moscow’s prestigious Khamovniki district. After a year-and-a-half-long legal battle involving fraud, conflicting court rulings, and a Supreme Court decision, the Moscow City Court ordered Dolina to vacate the property within days. Bailiffs may intervene if the court order is ignored. This episode breaks down the case, the court’s decision, and what comes next for both sides.

Two brutal domestic murders in Russia expose a disturbing pattern. In Kazan, Dinara Mingaliev strangled his wife and nearly killed their three-year-old son, breaking both of the child’s arms. In Volgograd, Sergey Orlov shot and dismembered his former wife over a minor household dispute. Both men now seek to avoid long prison sentences by signing military contracts and going to the war zone. These cases reveal how extreme violence against women is increasingly followed by impunity under the cover of war.

Former and active participants of Russia’s so-called Special Military Operation are repeatedly escaping real punishment for brutal crimes. In this episode, we расскаount cases of murder, arson, drunk driving, and domestic violence committed by SVO veterans — including repeat offenders released from prison and sent to war. Courts reduce sentences, investigations are closed, and victims’ families are left without justice. How participation in the war has become a shield from responsibility — in this episode of Nightmare of the Day.

A Russian military court has sentenced contract soldier Dmitry Stenkin to life in prison for the murder of 41-year-old Olesya Larina, a mother of four, and the attempted abduction of her children. Armed and intoxicated, the former convict broke into a family home in the village of Giryi in the Kursk region, shot the woman after she resisted rape, and critically wounded her husband. This episode examines the crime, the court ruling, eyewitness testimonies, and the growing wave of violence committed by former prisoners and returning soldiers from the war.

In Russia’s Kemerovo region, a 12-year-old boy escapes from his own home after months of brutal abuse by his mother and her partner. With broken legs, fractured ribs, and a face slashed with a knife, the child walks into the freezing night and hides in a supermarket to survive. This episode of From Russia with Fear tells the story of systematic torture, parental cruelty, and a crime investigators describe as an attempted murder — and asks how such violence remained invisible for so long.

Mikhail Malyshev, known as the “Perm cannibal,” has died at the age of 65. Convicted of murder and acts that shocked even veteran investigators, Malyshev served a full 23-year sentence — and was released in 2022. For three years, he lived freely in Perm, in the same apartment linked to his crimes. Neighbors feared him, authorities monitored him loosely, and Malyshev himself denied much of what had been proven in court. This episode retraces the criminal case that haunted Perm for decades, the failures of the system that allowed a convicted killer to return to everyday life, and the uneasy relief felt by a city after his death. From Russia with Fear — stories where punishment ends, but fear does not.

In the Russian city of Kaluga, an entire neighborhood is living in fear — not because of organized crime, but because of schoolchildren. A gang of teenagers beats classmates, extorts money, humiliates victims, and attacks adults who try to intervene. Parents end up in hospitals, children are afraid to go to school, and local businesses are vandalized. Complaints to schools and police lead nowhere. Some of the attackers are already known to juvenile authorities, yet the violence continues. This episode explores how teenage brutality becomes routine, how impunity fuels aggression, and why a system that refuses to act turns children into predators — and adults into victims.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we go to the small town of Borzya in Zabaykalsky Krai, where 34-year-old Konstantin Ektov was shot dead in the street. A former convict turned contract soldier, Ektov came back from the war and joined an operational group that hunted deserters — kidnapping their relatives, torturing them with electric shocks and taking bribes to “leave families alone.” One of those men, 31-year-old Vladimir Popov, says he paid Ektov not to be sent to the front, until a raid left his 80-year-old grandmother with a broken leg. Popov then waited for Ektov by the garages and killed him, later sending video confessions to local media. We look at how deserter hunts work in today’s Russia, why information about Ektov’s death is being wiped from the web, and how a tortured enforcer is now quietly being rewritten as a “hero who died in SVO.”

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the horrifying story of 51-year-old Alexey Isakov from Smolensk, who tortured his 10-year-old son, cut off his finger, fractured his skull, locked him in their apartment and set it on fire. The boy burned to death while trying to escape through the window.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we examine one of the most horrifying family tragedies in recent Russian history. In the town of Kansk, 29-year-old Valentina Mytko killed three of her own children with an axe — a baby, a four-year-old girl, and an eight-year-old boy. A fourth child survived only because, as the mother later said, she “didn’t have the strength” to kill him. The woman had been under psychiatric supervision since 2019, and the family was known to child protection services. We reconstruct the crime, the warning signs that were ignored, and another chillingly similar case from Yekaterinburg — asking how many red flags the system can miss before children pay with their lives.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we look at court decisions analyzed by investigative journalists showing that SVO participants have killed or seriously injured more than 1,000 people after returning home. We walk through multiple cases—from torture murders and domestic killings to attacks during leave—and the legal pattern behind them: participation in the war is repeatedly treated as a mitigating factor, while contracts and pardons allow offenders to avoid real prison time.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the chilling story of Kirill Cheplygin from Krasnoyarsk Krai, who brutally murdered his wife and her new partner in front of dozens of silent witnesses. Despite receiving a 19-year prison sentence, Cheplygin is already planning to avoid real punishment by signing a contract to fight in the war zone.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the shocking story of 33-year-old model Angelika Tartanova, who was found in critical condition in Moscow after being brutally beaten. Doctors performed two skull surgeries to save her life. She suffered brain swelling, memory loss, and severe speech impairment. Investigators believe the attack may be linked to Angelika’s boyfriend, a mysterious businessman named Dmitry, who has since disappeared and is now wanted by police. We reconstruct the days leading up to her disappearance, the signs of control and isolation, and the unanswered questions surrounding one of the most disturbing cases of domestic violence in recent months.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we follow three brutal killers who all avoided real punishment the same way — by signing a military contract and going to the war zone instead of serving long prison terms. In Sverdlovsk region, businessman Rafis Khuzin stabbed his wife, peeled skin from her body and buried her in the garden, then left a pre-trial cell for the army. In Serov, educated ex-lawyer Alexander Gook murdered a woman and her six-year-old son, dismembered the body and still escaped a potential life sentence through a contract. In Ivanovo region, sadistic wife-killer Mikhail Lobakov tortured his young spouse to death, but less than a year after sentencing was sent to fight in Ukraine and later declared a “hero.” Using real numbers from Russian lawyers, we explore how tens of thousands of serious criminal cases are being frozen or closed because their defendants go to SVO — and what it means when war becomes a door out of prison.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the horrifying story of a noise complaint that turned into a double murder. In the Moscow suburb of Kotelniki, 32-year-old neighbor Yevgeny Geraskin took a hammer, went upstairs and beat to death 34-year-old Alina Vorobyova and her six-year-old son Kirill because the child “ran and stomped” at home. He tried to stage a fake robbery, but police quickly exposed the lie. Now he faces life in prison—yet his lawyer says he hopes to escape punishment by signing a contract to fight in the Special Military Operation zone. We look at the long conflict, the ignored warning signs, and the new, chilling path from brutal crime to the frontline.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we look at the story of Lilit Mstoyan, a hyper-aggressive migrant mother in Yaroslavl who has spent years attacking neighbors, shop workers, and anyone who crosses her path. Despite hundreds of complaints, she faced no real consequences—until a school camera recorded her threatening to kill her daughter’s algebra teacher over a bad grade. We follow the trail of broken noses, online abuse and police inaction, and ask how one woman managed to terrorize an entire city block while hiding behind her status as a single mother and member of a small ethnic minority.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we expose how Roman, a Special Military Operation veteran, turned a Vladivostok apartment building into a place of fear and violence. Known for wandering the halls nearly naked, blasting music, and attacking neighbors, Roman’s erratic behavior terrorizes residents daily. Despite multiple police interventions, he remains unpunished—neighbors believe his veteran status shields him. We explore the chilling incidents, community response, and wider issues of accountability for returning soldiers.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we investigate the chilling case of a 14-year-old girl and her 16-year-old boyfriend who murdered her mother in the Kemerovo region. The teenagers stabbed the woman inside their apartment, hid the body in the basement, and tried to fake her disappearance. The family appeared stable, the conflict seemed routine—but behind closed doors, a teenage romance turned into a deadly conspiracy. We explore the motives, the neighbors’ silence, the investigation, and the uncomfortable rise of extreme teenage violence against parents in Russia.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the story of Anton Anisimov, an SVO veteran who stabbed an 11-year-old boy and avoided prison after an insanity ruling. The child, Mukhammad, survived with serious injuries, while the court sent Anisimov to a secure psychiatric hospital with no fixed term.