ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) – A St. Petersburg court sentenced a prominent history professor on Friday on charges of murdering and dismembering a student and sentenced him to 12 ½ years in prison.
The court found 64-year-old Oleg Sokolov, who taught at St. Petersburg State University, guilty of shooting and killing 24-year-old doctoral student Anastasia Yeshchenko in his apartment in November 2019.
Sokolov was detained after being pulled from the Moika River outside his apartment in St. Petersburg with a backpack with two severed arms inside.
The members were identified as from Yeshchenko, and investigators found other body parts in the river and in Sokolov’s apartment in historic St. Petersburg, less than a kilometer from the Hermitage Museum.
During the trial, Sokolov testified that he and Yeshchenko had a romantic relationship and that he shot her during a fight.
Prosecutors requested a 15-year sentence.
Sokolov was known for his books on the Napoleonic era and his enthusiastic participation in reconstructions of historical battles, and his case attracted wide attention in Russia.
A fluent French speaker, Sokolov has been a leading member of military reconstitution movements since the early 1990s and has represented Napoleon in numerous representations of historical battles and other events.
Sokolov’s extravagant style and impetuous delivery made him popular with students, and he talked about his passion for the Napoleonic era in TV interviews. Napoleon was his idol and other history buffs would treat him as ‘Lord’, the emperor’s title.