Police in Far East Russia’s republic of Sakha (Yakutia) have reportedly arrested a man suspected of killing two people after he was twice released early from prison for signing military contracts to fight in Ukraine.
The man, Viktor Savvinov, was first granted release from prison in 2023 after signing a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry. He had been serving an 11-year sentence for the murder of a woman three years earlier.
In 2024, Savvinov was arrested again and later sentenced to 20 years in prison for killing a man he knew and an elderly schoolteacher named Valentina Fyodorova.
He was released once more in July 2025 after signing a new military contract. Two months later, he was hospitalized, according to the local outlet Sakhaday, and subsequently escaped from a hospital in the neighboring republic of Buryatia.
Fyodorova’s daughter told Sakhaday on Monday that she had repeatedly warned law enforcement officials about Savvinov’s whereabouts after his escape. “I’ve lived in fear for my children and relatives for half a year,” she said. She was not identified by name.
Savvinov is now suspected of killing a man and a woman on Saturday, local media reported. At least one outlet reported that police arrested him at a nightclub in the regional capital of Yakutsk on Sunday.
Local authorities have not publicly commented on the reported arrest or the new murder allegations.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, investigative reporting based on court records has found that Russian soldiers have killed or injured more than 1,000 people after returning home from the war.
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