So far he has been convicted of 78 murders of women but has confessed to 83. One thing is for sure, former police officer Mikhail Popkov is one of the most horrific killers Russia has ever seen. And in the hope of regaining freedom, this man, sentenced to life imprisonment, formulated his request to fight with the Wagner group in Ukraine.
We knew that the deal proposed by Evguéni Prigojine in Russian prisons – six months of fighting on the front lines in Ukraine in exchange for automatic release – to bolster the ranks of his private Wagner militia drew some appeals. This weekend, one of them sparked an unexpected reaction.
On Sunday, Mikhail Popkov actually appeared on state television and announced his desire to join the mercenary commando to fight against the Ukrainians there. The man is well known to Russians: he is undoubtedly the worst serial killer in their history.
Route of an assassin
Mikhail Popkov is now 58 years old. He was born in the factory town of Norilsk in eastern Siberia, notorious for housing one of the darkest gulags of the Stalin era. He later sailed to eastern Russia and became a policeman in Irkutsk. But the policeman becomes a predator. He later attributes his crimes to his distaste for “frivolous women” — as noted here by CNews — and uses his police car to take prostitutes, bartenders, or walkers to remote locations to kill, maim, and possibly rape. Everything from 1992 to his arrest in 2012.
Mikhail Popkov was sentenced to a first life sentence in 2015 for 22 murders, then a second after confessing to about 50 others. Credited with authorizing 78 murders, he has since admitted five more, a horrifying 83 victim count. A bloodbath that led public opinion to forge two nicknames for him: “the werewolf” and “the madman of Angarsk”. And that’s why Russian state television held the spittoon to this man in his prison near Kazakhstan on Sunday for expressing his desire to join the Wagner group on the Ukrainian front.
The killer who didn’t like the cold
In this interview, reproduced in the tweet below, Mikhail Popkov answers the journalist behind bars. He seems to have trouble expressing himself, and occasionally, judging by the recording’s subtitles, does some odd reflections and turns. The interview begins with this broad question: “What is your dream?” “Enlist me in the army,” replies the prisoner. However, he continues: “If I were to say that it is my wish, I would not be completely sincere. After all, it is not a video game, it is not a novel, it is a story about superheroes.”
A moment of clarity? Quite cynical because he adds: “But to be honest and be honest, if I have to wait again during the January-February period, which is the coldest time – for me the frost, nothing worse – I’ll sign immediately.” “It’s just that you come out of a cold ditch into a warm room, how long can you last?” he asks.
The failure of Wagner’s recruitment policy
Without knowing whether he is referring to his career as a police officer or assassin – or both – Mikhaïl Popkov continues: “And when I think about my military profile, I think it is in demand at this moment.” “Of course they are the techniques are a bit more modern these days – radio waves and stuff – but even though I’ve been in prison for ten years, I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble getting back to it.” thinks it’s good to confirm.
Whether Russia and the Wagner Group are so desperate to grab the serial killer’s candidacy remains to be seen. In any case, the recruitment campaign orchestrated by Wagner in the prisons of the Russian Federation is a bitter failure. According to the Ukrainian Presidency, which TF1 announced on Monday, of the 38,000 prison soldiers deployed by Yevgeny Prigoyine’s militia on the front lines, 29,000 are already out of action.