St. Petersburg historian facing 15 years in prison for murdering graduate student girlfriend

The prosecution has requested 15 years in a maximum-security prison for former St. Petersburg State University professor Oleg Sokolov, who killed his former graduate student Anastasia Yeshchenko in November 2019. 

State prosecutors asked that Sokolov be sentenced to 13 years behind bars for Yeshchenko’s murder, along with additional time for illegal possession of a weapon.

According to RIA Novosti, after hearing the prosecutor’s request, Sokolov “said that he killed Yeshchenko unintentionally, ‘in a state of complete insanity’.”

"I admit my guilt completely and regret what I have done. It torments me. But it wasn’t] deliberate, it was in a state of complete insanity, which was due to terrible insults to my children [that were] said. Yes, I did it, but I don’t know if it can be called intentional, and even more so premeditated. In my opinion — no,” Sokolov said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

In November 2019, Oleg Sokolov was pulled from St. Petersburg’s Moyka River, carrying a backpack containing a woman’s severed hands. He later confessed to killing his former graduate student Anastasia Yeshchenko, with whom he was romantically involved. According to Sokolov, he shot Yeshchenko four times before dismembering her body. 

Sokolov claimed that he and Yeschenko got into a fight after he mentioned his children and she “started to freak out.”