A Russian convicted murderer who was sentenced to 11 years in prison after he killed his girlfriend and put her body through a meat grinder has been pardoned after fighting against Ukraine, his mother said.
The mother of Dmitry Zelensky told the Russian media news outlet 59.RU that her son was pardoned after serving less than half of his sentence.
Zelensky, a veteran of the Second Chechen War, confessed to the 2018 murder of his 27-year-old girlfriend, Tatiana Melekhina, in 2019, 59.RU reported.
He admitted to strangling her to death after a quarrel, before disposing of her body in a horrific way to try to cover up his tracks, the media outlet said.
According to 59.RU, Zelensky told investigators during an interrogation that he dismembered her body, processed it in a meat grinder, collected the bones in three bags, and threw them into the river.
A murder verdict carries a mandatory life sentence in Germany, you might be thinking of manslaughter, which has a minimum of five. Life-long means possibility of parole after no fewer than 15 years, the average is 18.9 years, 13% sit longer than 25 years including, indeed, life-long. Not to speak of the possibility of preventive detention.
I didn’t want to go in the details. My point was that sentences in the vercinity of 10 years for murder are common in Europe.