Russian law enforcement agencies have questioned a prominent Russian history professor over the death of a former student in the city of St. Petersburg, in a case that has grabbed headlines across the country.
Investigators opened a criminal case after the professor was pulled out of the Moika River, a waterway in the heart of the historic city, early Saturday morning. The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top law-enforcement agency, said in a statement that a pair of severed arms and a nonlethal handgun were discovered in a backpack the man was carrying, and that he had been detained as a suspect.
The suspect in the case is an academic celebrity. Russian state news agencies identified him as Oleg Sokolov, a professor at St. Petersburg State University. He is currently being treated for hypothermia in hospital. Sokolov was arrested after being pulled out of the Moika River in St. Petersburg.
According to his university biography, Sokolov is a specialist in the military history of France and a professor at the university’s Department of Modern and Contemporary History. Law enforcement officials told the Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti that the dismembered body of the victim, Anastasia Yeshchenko, a former student of the professor, was found in Sokolov’s apartment.
Yeshchenko came from the southern Russian city of Krasnodar to study in St. Petersburg and had continued to work with Sokolov as a researcher, according to the state news agency TASS. It added that law enforcement officials were also looking into media reports that Sokolov beat some of his students.
TASS said that reports that Sokolov had confessed to the murder were inaccurate, citing the St. Petersburg branch of the Investigative Committee. Divers reportedly uncovered the remains of another person while searching the Moika River.
Russian state news agencies reported that divers searching the Moika River as part of the investigation had discovered the remains of another person in a bag. TASS said the human remains belonged to another person, presumed to be a man, and that police were working to establish the identity of that person. It is unclear if the discovery is related to the death of Yeshchenko.
The institution announced Saturday that it had stripped Sokolov of his position on its scientific committee. “We learn with horror from the press the atrocious crime allegedly committed by Oleg Sokolov,” it said in a statement.
“As professor of modern history at the University of Saint Petersburg … awarded the French Légion d’Honneur, we would never have imagined that he could have committed this horrible act. “We are stripping him immediately of his position as a member of the scientific committee and we send all our condolences and support to the family of the victim.”