Posted by In November 2019 Russian historian Oleg Sokolov, 63, a Napoleon expert and lecturer at Saint Petersburg State University, killed and dismembered his partner and former student Anastasia Yeshchenko, 24. He was caught when he was pulled out of the Moika river with the victim’s arms in his backpack. In December 2020 he was sentenced to 12 and a half years.
Oleg Sokolov, a prominent Russian historian, appeared in court in Saint Petersburg on Monday 11 November 2019 in a gruesome murder case that made headlines across the country.
Oleg Sokolov, 63, a professor at Saint Petersburg State University, was the suspect in the death of one of his former students, Anastasia Yeshchenko. The professor had been pulled out of the Moika river, in the heart of the historic city, over the weekend of 9-10 November 2019. A backpack he was carrying contained a pair of severed arms and a non-lethal pistol.
Law enforcement told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that Yeshchenko’s dismembered body had been found in Sokolov’s flat. The victim was 24, according to the agency.
Oleg Sokolov and his relationship with the victim
In court, Sokolov told the judge “I deeply repent”, according to the local news site fontanka.ru. He said he had lived with the victim for five years. “I considered her a bride and told my friends I would marry her,” Sokolov said, according to fontanka.ru. He described in court how the couple had clashed in an argument about his children. Sokolov was sent to Kresty, a pre-trial detention centre, for two months.
Yeshchenko came from the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and had moved to Saint Petersburg to study, going on to work with Sokolov as a researcher, according to the state news agency TASS. It added that law enforcement officials were also looking into media reports that Sokolov had beaten some of his students.
Sokolov is a specialist in French military history and was a professor in the Department of Modern and Contemporary History at Saint Petersburg State University. A historical re-enactor, Sokolov often appeared in Napoleonic-era uniforms and worked as a consultant on historical reconstructions for film and television.
He was also a member of the French Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences (ISSEP), an academic institution founded by Marion Maréchal, niece of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right party National Rally. The institution announced that it had removed Sokolov from its scientific committee.
In December 2020 the court in Saint Petersburg found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to 12 and a half years in a high-security penal colony. Saint Petersburg State University had already dismissed him.
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