According to the Russian mass media, in the criminal war unleashed by the Kremlin against Ukraine, Ihor Trifonov, the general of the occupying Russian army who previously headed the law enforcement agency in Yekaterinburg, was eliminated.
What is known about the liquidation of General Trifonov
The former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Yekaterinburg, Ihor Trifonov, who was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison in 2022 in the case of bribery and illegal possession of weapons, died in the war in Ukraine, according to the material of the Russian publication "Kommersant".
According to the lawyer of the liquidated general, Olga Kezik, Trifonov tried for a long time to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense of the aggressor country, and he managed to get into the war only at the end of December last year.
At the same time, the lawyer added that she had not yet received official documents confirming Trifonov's dismissal.
The lawyer added that Trifonov wanted to "win". The wife of the liquidated general found out about his death on January 2.
What is known about General Trifonov
Ihor Trifonov headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Yekaterinburg from 2011 to 2017, after which he headed the Department of Internal Affairs in Karachayevo-Cherkessia until 2019.
In August 2022, Trifonov was found guilty of illegally possessing weapons and receiving a bribe for initiating a criminal case related to fraud involving funds from the Koltso Ural bank.
In March 2023, the sentence was commuted, and the term was reduced by two months — to nine years and four months in a penal colony.
What is known about the consequences of the return of former prisoners to Russia after the war against Ukraine
According to the Financial Times, Russian criminals released from prison for participating in the war against Ukraine are returning to Russia and committing atrocities, scaring Russians.
The authors of the article note that Anna Boltynyuk, a resident of the Kaluga region, lost her daughter in 2014, who was the victim of brutal rape and murder.
Currently, after only three years of imprisonment and participation in the war against Ukraine, the murderer and rapist are walking free again.
The murderer, Yevheny Tatarintsev, disappeared last year from the prison colony, which, according to reports, was personally visited by the deceased leader of "Wagner" Yevgeny Prigozhin, seeking to recruit people to his group.
Boltyniuk repeatedly appealed to the federal prison system to find out where he was and was eventually told that he had been pardoned.
Tatarintsev is one of the thousands of prisoners who accepted a pardon offer in exchange for service on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Most of them entered the war against Ukraine together with the "Wagner group", but some joined separate groups funded by the Ministry of Defense and replenished the ranks of "cannon fodder" for Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.
Currently, ex-prisoners are returning to Russia from the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the vast majority of mobilized Russian men remain at the front, fighting under contracts whose end date is still uncertain.
Convicts are treated differently: they are considered "volunteers" and sign contracts for only six months.
Most of them return to the same settlements they terrorized before their arrest, and some continue to commit crimes. Victims and their families watch in fear as pardoned criminals return to everyday life.
They are not officially informed that criminals who should have been in prison for decades are suddenly released. Victims and their loved ones learn about it through hearsay or when they short-stop receiving the small amounts of compensation that convicts are ordered to get out of prison.
All over Russia, people are shocked to discover that the perpetrators of sometimes gruesome murders have returned to their locality.
In Berdsk last month, residents discovered that a man who killed a woman in 2019 to steal and sell her car was back in town when he was spotted as a driver on a local taxi app.
Nikolai Ogolobyak from Yaroslavl was serving a 20-year sentence for participating in the murder of four teenagers as part of a satanic ritual when representatives of the Ministry of Defense stormed his colony in the Russian Arctic.
In November, residents of Yaroslavl were horrified to discover that Ogolobyak, now 33 years old, had suddenly returned to the city and become a free man.
Ogolobyak was arrested in 2008 after he lured two young women to an abandoned area of Yaroslavl, where he and his friends staged a satanic ritual. The group butchered the women, mutilated their bodies, and then killed the young couple, who they feared would turn them into the police.
According to him, he went to war partly to get out of prison earlier but mainly "to atone for his sins, as they say, with sweat and blood."