Roman Michurin. Photo: Odnoklassniki
A Russian soldier suspected of kidnapping and murdering a woman in the Siberian city of Irkutsk after his own wife was placed in a women’s shelter on Wednesday has been arrested, the Irkutsk region Investigative Committee announced on Thursday.
Investigators said that 32-year-old Irkutsk resident Roman Michurin had been charged with murdering a woman he took hostage from a bus stop outside the city’s Obereg domestic violence shelter where his wife had been placed after enduring months of domestic abuse at his hands.
The victim, who has not been named, was also a resident of the shelter, but is not believed to have had any prior connection to Michurin.
According to the Investigative Committee, Michurin has multiple prior convictions, including one for murder in 2009. In 2019, a criminal case was opened against him for making death threats, while in 2023, he was convicted of setting fire to his partner’s apartment.
Though the authorities made no mention of the fact that Michurin is a veteran of the war in Ukraine, according to war crimes monitoring website Myrotvorets, Michurin enlisted in the Russian military to avoid a prison sentence for his last conviction in July 2024.
Having served in Russia’s 74th Guards Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, Michurin reportedly absconded from his unit in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and returned home to Irkutsk.
