Russian serial killer volunteers to fight for Putin in Ukraine

Jailed Russian serial killer rapist nicknamed ‘The Werewolf’ who killed 83 women volunteers to fight for Putin in Ukraine

• Mikhail Popkov, 58, wants to join the Wagner private army to fight in Ukraine
• The sex attacker is serving two life sentences after murdering 83 women
• The Kremlin scheme has freed around 40k convicts after offering them pardons 

Russia’s bloodiest serial killer is volunteering to fight for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

Sex attacker Mikhail Popkov, 58, wants to join a controversial scheme that has seen thousands of murderers, rapists and other hardened criminals become mercenaries.

Putin pardons those who fight and stay alive for six months.

Ex-policeman Popkov – nicknamed ‘The Werewolf’ and the ‘Angarsk Maniac’ – has killed 83 women, and is serving two life sentences plus nine years after three separate trials.

Sex attacker Mikhail Popkov, 58, wants to join a controversial scheme that has seen thousands of murderers, rapists and other hardened criminals become mercenaries

Ex-policeman Popkov – nicknamed ‘The Werewolf’ and the ‘Angarsk Maniac’ – has killed 83 women. Pictured: six of his victims

But a police source believes the true toll of victims is ‘closer to 200’. Pictured is a skeleton of one of the victims

A police source believes his true toll is ‘closer to 200’.

Popkov raped most of his victims aged 18 to 50 before killing them with axes, hammers, knives, screwdrivers and spades.

Despite this, the Russian authorities permitted state TV to interview him behind bars as he pleaded to join Putin’s fighters, claiming he had radio-electronics experience from his time as a Red Army conscript.

He hopes to use the sickening Kremlin scheme which has freed as many as 40,000 convicts to gain his liberty.

Popkov is even suddenly confessing to more murders as he seeks to win a place in the Wagner private army, headed by Putin crony Yevgeny Prigozhin, which is backing the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

He was asked by Russian state TV: ‘What is your dream?’

He replied: ‘To join the army.’

The mass killer said: ‘I would not hesitate to do so [join the war].

‘If I refer to my military registration profession, I think it’s in rather high demand now…

‘Though it’s probably more modern these days – radio-electronics…

‘But even though I’ve been in prison for 10 years, I don’t think it would be so hard to learn [new skills] quickly.’

Married father-of-one Popkov conducted a reign of terror against women out alone between 1992 and 2010

Victims Tatyana Martynova (right) and Yulia Kuprikova (middle) a few months before they were killed

Popkov said in an interview that it is his ‘dream’ to join the army, in which convicts are given pardons

Married father-of-one Popkov conducted a reign of terror against women out alone between 1992 and 2010 in his home city Angarsk which he wanted to ‘cleanse of prostitutes’.

A psychiatric evaluation diagnosed Popkov with homicidal mania, ‘a condition when a person has an irrational desire to kill someone’, reported TASS.

Nevertheless, the mass murderer was declared sane.

During the pandemic he was put to work in jail making face masks.

‘There were moments when I thought the death penalty was better,’ he has said.

Russia has had a moratorium on use of the death penalty since 1996. Before this, the condemned were shot to the back of the head by an executioner.

He implied that his wish to fight in the war was stronger than a simple desire.

‘This is not a computer game, these are not fiction books about superheroes,’ he said.

He hoped he would survive the extreme frontline cold in January and February.

‘For me the coldest frosts are the worst,’ he said.

Speaking earlier from behind bars in Irkutsk, Popkov expressed ‘regret’ if not remorse for his butchery.

‘I have a lot to regret. For example, that none of this had happened, that I had not done (these things),’ he said.

‘It is a natural desire of any person – to regret. I have had a lot of time to think (about it).’

The 82nd victim was Natalya Zvereva who was sexually attacked and murdered in a Siberian forest.

Married father-of-one Popkov told interrogators he raped Zvereva then ‘we quarrelled and I murdered her.’

He said: ‘I hit her on the top of her head…. She fell down and did not show any signs of life.’

He threw her body into a river, he said.

The name of the 83rd victim was not disclosed.

A chilling video from his family archive shows the killer in the 1990s walking towards the camera clutching a knife and reciting a post-war nursery rhyme based on Nazi prisoners of war attacking locals.

‘I will slash you. I will beat you. Now it’s your turn,’ he says with a sinister smile. 

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