Early release Russian Satanist who killed four teenagers pardoned after fighting in Ukraine

Content warning: This story contains descriptions of extreme violence.

Nikolai Ogolobyak, who was sentenced in 2010 to 20 years in a penal colony for the ritual killing of four teenagers in Russia’s Yaroslavl region, was pardoned after fighting in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, his father told the local news outlet 76.ru.

According to his father, Nikolai lives in Yaroslavl’s Dzerzhinsky district with his mother. He came back from the war on November 2.

On November 18, the Moscow Komsomolets reported Nikolai’s release. According to the outlet, Yaroslavl’s residents noticed “a tall man dressed in all-black” in the Zavolzhsky district. Local residents claim that “he was constantly caught under the influence of alcohol.” Nikolai told residents that he signed a contract and went to fight in Ukraine for half a year.

“He still hasn’t even once been to the Zavolzhsky district. And they’re writing that he’s walking around drunk dressed in black on the other side of the Volga, yelling, screaming. It really pissed me off,” says Nikolai’s father.

The outlet 76.ru writes that 15-year-old Konstantin Baranov founded a Satanist gang in Yaroslavl in 2006. According to the investigation, he was joined by two other teenagers — Nikolai Ogolobyak and Alexey Chistyakov, as well as Anton Makovkin, Sergey Karpenko, Alexander Voronov, and Ksenia Kovaleva. They performed bloody rituals, sacrificing dogs and cats.

In the summer of 2008, they killed four teenagers — Olga Pukhova, Anna Gorokhova, Varvara Kuzmina, and Andrey Solovyov. According to the investigation, their bodies were dismembered. At the time, law enforcement agencies reported that “a cult member carried out the killings for ritual purposes.” The investigative committee said that “the accused are members of an informal youth association focused on the occult, while they identify themselves as Satanists.” Social media reported that the suspects stabbed the teenagers to death, recited several “incantations” over their bodies, scalped them, and cut off their genitals.

In July 2010, a Yaroslavl court sentenced seven of the accused to prison terms ranging from two to 20 years. Nikolai, who was already an adult at the time of the crime, received the longest prison sentence. He was sentenced to 20 years in a high-security penal colony, having been found guilty of the murder of two or more people, and the desecration of the bodies of the dead. He was set to be released in 2030. All the others who were sent to prison have already been released.