A rapist freed from an eight year jail sentence and pardoned by Vladimir Putin so he could fight in Ukraine has been detained again after allegedly sexually assaulting a 14year-old girl.
Nikolai Nechaev, 38, from the city of Perm, is the latest of hundreds of prisoners, including murderers and rapists, freed by Putin, to have committed new offences after serving in his forces and having their jail terms personally annulled by the dictator.
Nachaev was previously convicted of a 2019 rape, among other crimes.
He fought for Russia in Ukraine for six months ending in November, when he was fully pardoned from his previous crime.
Only three months later, in February, he is believed to have targeted his next victim.
Pardoned rapist Nikolai Nechaev, 38, detained again in Russia on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old schoolgirl – only three months after he came out of the army
The rapist served his six mandatory months in the military after being released from prison
The alleged sex attack on the young girl carries a jail term of between eight and 15 years under Russian law.
Nechaev is suspected of ‘committing violent acts of a sexual nature’ against his schoolgirl victim.
He is currently detained pending further investigations.
When he was released by Putin’s regime in May 2023, he was assigned to the ‘special military operation’ and left to fight for the brutal Wagner military group.
At that time the minimum contract for a released convict stood at six months – and that is precisely what Nechaev signed up for.
He was in prison serving an eight-year sentence for the rape of a woman in 2019
CCTV footage from the time showed the dangerous criminal following his victim in the dark
The haunting footage shows the rapist walking onto a lift after having followed the woman
Now, a criminal case has been initiated under Part 3 of Article 132 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
The offender doesn’t seem to be able to be free for very long before committing another crime.
The rape in 2019 happened only one month after being released from a previous prison sentence for other crimes.
However, according to news outlet Dialog, Russian news reports say Nechaev apparently hopes to avoid a full term of imprisonment yet again by enlisting again to fight in the war.
It remains unclear if he will be able to for a second time.
Nechaev was only out for three months before allegedly sexually assaulting his next victim
He was sentenced to eight years for the 2019 rape of a 20-year-old woman, but was released
According to Russian news reports, the rapist is going to try to be released yet again to fight
Putin, desperate to increase his military numbers in almost any way possible, began pardoning prisonersnot long after the start of the war.
In 2023, the Ministry of Defence said: ‘In the coming weeks, thousands of Russian convicts who have fought for Wagner Group are likely to be pardoned and released.
‘Wagner prisoner recruitment peaked in autumn 2022, with inmates being offered commutation of their sentences after six months of service.
‘Although approximately half of the prisoners recruited have likely been killed or wounded, evidence from Russia suggests the group is following through on its promise to free survivors.’
It added that certificates issued to released Wagner veterans were ‘endorsed by the decree of President Putin’.
But the MoD said that the freeing of the recruited prisoners will cause significant personnel problems for the Wagner group and for Putin’s military.
Putin has been releasing and pardoning prisoners since early on in the war to boost numbers
Now dead Wagner leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said a large number of those released had died
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the now dead Wagner leader whose plane ‘crashed’ after he launched a rebellion on the Kremlin in June, spoke the previous January about releasing convicts to fight, or rather, releasing them to die.
As reported by the BBC, he said that over the course of a year, Wagner recruited 49,000 prisoners to fight and only 32,000 returned.
That’s a much lower proportion than he originally promised but independent researchers believe the real number of survivors is even lower, about 20,000.
In a video in January welcoming ex-convicts home, Prigozhin tells them: ‘You were an offender, as they say – now you’re a war hero!’