Gianni Cenni’s Russian military ID. Photo: Telegram
A convicted Italian murderer and paedophile fighting for the Russian military has been captured by the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the city of Kupyansk in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Italian daily newspaper Libero reported on Sunday.
Gianni Cenni, 51, joined the Russian military in November only to be captured weeks later, according to Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces, which called him “another victim of Russian propaganda”.
Gianni Cenni. Photo: Telegram
In unverified video footage taken by the Ukrainian soldiers who captured him that was later shared on Telegram, Cenni can be heard saying that he had been “unlawfully mobilised in Russia”, adding that he did not want to fight and simply wished to return home to Italy.
Cenni was convicted of murder for killing one of his co-workers at a security firm in 1999, according to Italian news outlet Napoli Today, serving nearly a decade in prison before being released in 2008.
In 2012 Cenni was charged with sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl, though he was not convicted and sentenced until 2016, and the sentence itself was not enforced until 2022, by which time he had left Italy for Finland, according to Napoli Today.
After starting a relationship with a Russian woman in Finland, Cenni subsequently moved with her to Samara in Russia’s Volga region, where he worked as a cook before enlisting in the Russian military.
