Russia convicted Andrey Kiyko of strangling women in a Saint Petersburg park. Multiple murders, a string of rapes, twenty-five years.
In 2024, with seven years left on his sentence, the Defence Ministry handed him a contract and sent him to fight in Ukraine. He was wounded, placed in a rehab clinic, and walked out last autumn.
The ministry only admitted he was missing this month, and Russian reporters say the escape was quietly buried.
This is the army Moscow calls the world's second: it empties its cells of serial killers to throw at Ukraine, then loses them and hides it. The men it pardons don't vanish. They come home. 🏠