SAINT PETERSBURG: A court in Saint Petersburg on Friday sentenced a Russian historian and Napoleon enthusiast to 12-and-a-half-years in jail for murdering and dismembering his young student lover last year.

The trial, which spurred activists to voice growing anger over domestic abuse in Russia, began in June after delays due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Friday, Oleg Sokolov, a history lecturer who received France’s Legion d’Honneur in 2003, came to the courtroom in a grey suit and a white shirt, a journalist following the trial reported. Sokolov paced back and forth in a glass cell as Judge Yulia Maximenko sentenced him to “12 years and six months in a strict regime penal colony” on charges of murder and the illegal possession of firearms.

“He was aware of his actions at the time of the crime,” Maximenko said as she read out the verdict, adding that the intent to murder arose “suddenly”.

Sokolov was arrested in November 2019 after he was hauled out of the freezing Moika River in Saint Petersburg while drunk and carrying a backpack containing a woman’s arms.

The historian pleaded guilty to the charges of murdering 24-year-old Anastasia Yeshchenko, but said he committed the crime in the heat of the moment during an argument with his former student and lover.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2020