Former Russian inmate released to fight in Ukraine sent back to prison for new murder he committed after returning from front

A court in Russia’s Primorsky region has handed down a seven-year prison sentence for murder to a local man named Maksim Volkovoy, who was previously imprisoned in a separate murder case before joining the war in Ukraine, reportedly as part of Wagner Group.

According to investigators, after Volkovoy returned from the war, he got into an argument with an acquaintance while drinking at a friend’s house and ended up beating and stabbing the man to death with chairs, a knife, and a bat.

The court’s ruling says that Volkovoy had no previous convictions, but journalists from the independent outlet Mediazona found court records from the murder trial of a man with the same name in March 2022 that show he was sentenced to eight years in prison at the time.

The Primorsky court did not take Volkovoy’s previous murder conviction into account as an aggravating circumstance. It did, however, consider his participation in the war and the state medals he received for his service to be a mitigating factor.