Cannibal serial killer Denis Gorin pardoned by Putin for fighting in Ukraine

A convicted Russian serial killer — and cannibal — has been pardoned in exchange for fighting in Ukraine, just days after it was revealed that President Vladimir Putin had freed a notorious Satanist murderer.

Denis Gorin, 44, from the town of Aniva in the Sakhalin region, was sentenced in 2018 to 22 years in a penal colony for savagely stabbing a man to death and eating his flesh.

In total, Gorin killed at least four people and partially ate two of them — but his body count could be as high as 13, according to his neighbor.  

In late October, Gorin posted a photo on social media showing him smiling while wearing a military uniform, with bandages on his forehead and throat, reported the Russian Telegram channel Sakhalin Against War.

“He is in South-Sakhalinsk, in the hospital, with a moderate injury,” his neighbor told the independent Russian news outlet Sibir.Realii. 

“But I don’t think he’ll be free for long. His victims’ relatives all remember him.”

Gorin committed his first known murder in 2002 along with his brother, Yevgeny, stabbing a man more than 50 times and then cutting off chunks of flesh from the victim’s body and eating them.

He was convicted of murder and desecration and sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released on parole early in 2010 for good behavior.

Just months later, Gorin stabbed to death the brother of his ex-cellmate, before deciding to “remember the good old days” by slicing off and eating pieces of the victim’s flesh, according to media reports citing court records.

In 2011, the Gorin brothers killed another man and hid his body along a river bank.

In January 2012, Denis and Yevgeny Gorin struck again, this time stabbing a man to death 29 times outside a store, court records stated.

That summer, police uncovered another heinous murder committed by Gorin back in November 2010, in which he stabbed a man 8-to-10 times, cut off flesh from his biceps and thighs with a knife, placed it inside a plastic back and later stored it in his refrigerator to be cooked and eaten.

Gorin’s neighbor, Dmitri, said that when police came to arrest him and opened his fridge, they found it “fully stocked with human flesh.”

Gorin and his brother then allegedly led the cops to a makeshift gravesite where they had buried some of their victims, which the neighbor claimed was found to contain 12 skeletons — including one allegedly belonging to a young girl.

“The other murders could not be proved in court,” the neighbor said. “They considered only those killings to which Gorin and his brother had confessed themselves.”

Dmitri darkly predicted that Gorin would soon meet a violent end. 

“The victims have many relatives in Aniva and in South-Sakhalinsk. Something tells me that Gorin won’t be walking free for long,” the neighbor said. “If the authorities cannot guarantee a punishment, family members will take matters into their own hands. What else is there to do?”

Dmitri, who also fought in Ukraine, stopped short of criticizing Putin, but decried the decision to release such a violent offender as Gorin as a mark of “lawlessness.”   

Gorin is among thousands of Russian convicts — including some of the most violent offenders — who have been pardoned in exchange for fighting on the front lines in Ukraine.

Earlier this week, it was revealed Putin had pardoned 33-year-old Nikolai Ogolobyak, 33, a self-confessed Satanist who took part in the ritual killings of four teenagers — beheading and partially eating two of them.

Ogolobyak was sentenced to 20 years for the 2008 murders that shocked the Yaroslavl region. He was scheduled to be released in 2030, but was allowed to enlist in Russia’s “Storm Z” unit of convicts — and then pardoned by Putin after serving for six months in Ukraine, his father told the news outlet 76.ru.