Russian soldier strangles woman to death in Irkutsk after his own wife is placed in shelter

A Russian soldier has kidnapped and killed a woman in the Siberian city of Irkutsk after an anti-domestic violence charity took his wife into its care following months of abuse, regional news outlet Baikal People reported on Wednesday.  

Alexander Sobolev, who heads women’s shelter Obereg, said that the soldier in question had been terrorising his own wife and 7-year-old son for several months, “tormenting them with a knife, kicking them” and meting out what he called “general humiliation”, adding that the abuse had continued despite the charity repeatedly requesting the police to intervene. 

When the soldier’s wife was eventually placed into Obereg’s custody for her own safety, the soldier retaliated by taking another resident of the shelter hostage at knifepoint, kidnapping her from a nearby bus stop, Sobolev said.

“More than 50 police officers, secret service, traffic police, emergency workers, and staff from the Military Prosecutor’s Office arrived. We tried to negotiate through the door. At 2:30am, he emerged alone, having strangled his hostage, an innocent woman who was the mother of two girls,” Sobolev continued.

Though Sobolev didn’t name the victim or the perpetrator, he did say that he had absconded from a military unit in Rostov-on-Don, in southwestern Russia, and felt a sense of impunity due to his military service. “He beat her every day and was confident that nothing would happen to him other than getting sent back to the front,” Sobolev said. 

There has so far been no announcement by the Investigative Committee, the police, or the Irkutsk region Prosecutor’s Office confirming the arrest of a serving member of the Russian military for suspected murder, according to Telegram news channel ASTRA.