Putin’s Deal With Wife Killers

During the war in Ukraine, the number of annual murders has increased in Russia for the first time in two decades, according to the country’s bar association. The Russian legal system—sometimes not good, sometimes not bad—investigates, prosecutes, and sentences some of these killers. But President Vladimir Putin has undermined the country’s already patchy justice system by pardoning even the worst of sentenced murderers if they agree to go and murder more in Ukraine. After serving in the mercenary Wagner Group or so-called Storm-Z units of convicts on the Ukrainian front, killers and thieves return to Russia, where they go free.

One murderer whom Putin recently pardoned, 27-year-old Vladislav Kanyus, spent more than three hours killing his former girlfriend, Vera Pekhteleva. Forensic records describe