In Russia’s Kemerovo region, a 12-year-old boy escapes from his own home after months of brutal abuse by his mother and her partner. With broken legs, fractured ribs, and a face slashed with a knife, the child walks into the freezing night and hides in a supermarket to survive. This episode of From Russia with Fear tells the story of systematic torture, parental cruelty, and a crime investigators describe as an attempted murder — and asks how such violence remained invisible for so long.

Mikhail Malyshev, known as the “Perm cannibal,” has died at the age of 65. Convicted of murder and acts that shocked even veteran investigators, Malyshev served a full 23-year sentence — and was released in 2022.

For three years, he lived freely in Perm, in the same apartment linked to his crimes. Neighbors feared him, authorities monitored him loosely, and Malyshev himself denied much of what had been proven in court.

This episode retraces the criminal case that haunted Perm for decades, the failures of the system that allowed a convicted killer to return to everyday life, and the uneasy relief felt by a city after his death.

From Russia with Fear — stories where punishment ends, but fear does not.

In the Russian city of Kaluga, an entire neighborhood is living in fear — not because of organized crime, but because of schoolchildren.

A gang of teenagers beats classmates, extorts money, humiliates victims, and attacks adults who try to intervene. Parents end up in hospitals, children are afraid to go to school, and local businesses are vandalized. Complaints to schools and police lead nowhere. Some of the attackers are already known to juvenile authorities, yet the violence continues.

This episode explores how teenage brutality becomes routine, how impunity fuels aggression, and why a system that refuses to act turns children into predators — and adults into victims.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we go to the small town of Borzya in Zabaykalsky Krai, where 34-year-old Konstantin Ektov was shot dead in the street. A former convict turned contract soldier, Ektov came back from the war and joined an operational group that hunted deserters — kidnapping their relatives, torturing them with electric shocks and taking bribes to “leave families alone.” One of those men, 31-year-old Vladimir Popov, says he paid Ektov not to be sent to the front, until a raid left his 80-year-old grandmother with a broken leg. Popov then waited for Ektov by the garages and killed him, later sending video confessions to local media. We look at how deserter hunts work in today’s Russia, why information about Ektov’s death is being wiped from the web, and how a tortured enforcer is now quietly being rewritten as a “hero who died in SVO.”

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the horrifying story of 51-year-old Alexey Isakov from Smolensk, who tortured his 10-year-old son, cut off his finger, fractured his skull, locked him in their apartment and set it on fire. The boy burned to death while trying to escape through the window.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we examine one of the most horrifying family tragedies in recent Russian history. In the town of Kansk, 29-year-old Valentina Mytko killed three of her own children with an axe — a baby, a four-year-old girl, and an eight-year-old boy. A fourth child survived only because, as the mother later said, she “didn’t have the strength” to kill him. The woman had been under psychiatric supervision since 2019, and the family was known to child protection services. We reconstruct the crime, the warning signs that were ignored, and another chillingly similar case from Yekaterinburg — asking how many red flags the system can miss before children pay with their lives.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we look at court decisions analyzed by investigative journalists showing that SVO participants have killed or seriously injured more than 1,000 people after returning home. We walk through multiple cases—from torture murders and domestic killings to attacks during leave—and the legal pattern behind them: participation in the war is repeatedly treated as a mitigating factor, while contracts and pardons allow offenders to avoid real prison time.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the chilling story of Kirill Cheplygin from Krasnoyarsk Krai, who brutally murdered his wife and her new partner in front of dozens of silent witnesses. Despite receiving a 19-year prison sentence, Cheplygin is already planning to avoid real punishment by signing a contract to fight in the war zone.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we tell the shocking story of 33-year-old model Angelika Tartanova, who was found in critical condition in Moscow after being brutally beaten. Doctors performed two skull surgeries to save her life. She suffered brain swelling, memory loss, and severe speech impairment. Investigators believe the attack may be linked to Angelika’s boyfriend, a mysterious businessman named Dmitry, who has since disappeared and is now wanted by police. We reconstruct the days leading up to her disappearance, the signs of control and isolation, and the unanswered questions surrounding one of the most disturbing cases of domestic violence in recent months.

In this episode of From Russia with Fear, we follow three brutal killers who all avoided real punishment the same way — by signing a military contract and going to the war zone instead of serving long prison terms. In Sverdlovsk region, businessman Rafis Khuzin stabbed his wife, peeled skin from her body and buried her in the garden, then left a pre-trial cell for the army. In Serov, educated ex-lawyer Alexander Gook murdered a woman and her six-year-old son, dismembered the body and still escaped a potential life sentence through a contract. In Ivanovo region, sadistic wife-killer Mikhail Lobakov tortured his young spouse to death, but less than a year after sentencing was sent to fight in Ukraine and later declared a “hero.” Using real numbers from Russian lawyers, we explore how tens of thousands of serious criminal cases are being frozen or closed because their defendants go to SVO — and what it means when war becomes a door out of prison.