2 Russians convicted of murdering and eating victims have been released after fighting in Ukraine: reports

• Two men convicted of murder were released after fighting in Ukraine, per Russian media.
• Denis Gorin and Nikolai Ogolobyak killed their victims and ate parts of their bodies, reports said.

Russia released two prisoners convicted of murder, who then ate parts of their victims, after they fought in Ukraine, according to multiple Russian reports.

In 2003, Denis Gorin was sentenced to 9 years and 10 months in jail for premeditated murder and "subsequently desecrating the corpse of his victim," according to court records shared and translated by Meduza.

He was released on parole in 2010. But three years later was sentenced to 20 years and 10 months in prison for knifing an acquaintance to death, cutting his victim's leg, and consuming it as food to "remember the old days," per court records shared by the outlet.

Meanwhile, in 2010, Nikolai Ogolobyak was given a 20-year prison term for murder and the desecration of dead bodies after killing four teenagers with accomplices in blood rituals in 2008, per 76.ru.

Both men would spend years behind bars before being released to fight in Ukraine.

Gorin, from Russia's Sakhalin region, is wearing a military uniform in a photo published on his social media page in October, according to a Telegram post by the Sakhalin Against War account. The report fails to specify where the picture was taken.

He's now recovering from moderate injuries at a military hospital in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, his neighbor Dmitry told Russian news outlet Siberia Realities.

"He's basically free, pardoned, and half his [prison] sentence has been wiped out," Dmitry told the outlet, according to a translation by Ukrainska Pravda.

However, Dmitry added that his freedom could be short-lived.

"I don't think he'll stay free for long. His victims' relatives remember everything," he told the outlet.

Ogolobyak, from Russia's Yaroslavl region, was pardoned after serving in a Storm Z assault detachment for six months in Ukraine, per the local 76.ru news website.

Ogolobyak and his associates murdered two people by chopping their heads off and extracting their hearts and tongues before frying and eating them, the outlet reported, citing court documents.

Ogolobya stabbed two other victims to death, penetrating their bodies 666 times and counting the blows out loud, witnesses said.

His father told the outlet that he is now recovering after sustaining serious injuries and will likely not go back to fight, according to a translation by the Moscow Times.

The Wagner mercenary group had used convicts to fight in Ukraine, recruiting up to 49,000 of them, a group official identified as Marx said, per the Telegram channel Razgruzka Vagnera.

Russia's army has also deployed convicts in penal battalions to fight in Ukraine as it struggles to mount effective offensives on the battlefield, the UK's Ministry of Defence said in October.