Friends, today our article is not exactly about activists or prisoners of conscience, although we will return to them. This time, we will talk about an antihero — Denis Gorin.

What makes him notable for us is not only the gravity of the crimes he committed. Much more important is something else: what sentences Russian justice imposed on a man who killed people and consumed parts of his victims’ bodies — and what sentences people receive today for words, conversations, and actions that the state considers politically dangerous.

So, who is Denis Gorin?

A repeat murderer and cannibal from Sakhalin. He was repeatedly convicted of murder. His case files included episodes involving the consumption of human flesh, and in 2018 his final sentence amounted to 22 years in a special-regime penal colony.

The first murder for which Gorin was convicted took place in 2002. The case included desecration of the victim’s body; this episode is also associated with his first known act of cannibalism. In 2003, Gorin was sentenced to 9 years and 11 months in prison.

But he did not serve the full sentence.

In April 2010, Gorin was released on parole. He still had 2 years, 5 months and 19 days left to serve.

In other words, he actually spent about 7 years in prison.

Remember that number.

Now let us turn to someone with an almost identical surname.

Alexei Gorinov.

7 years.

And what exactly did he do?

Did he kill someone?

Dismember someone?

Eat a human being?

No.

At a municipal council meeting, Gorinov spoke about the war in Ukraine and about children being killed. He asked his colleagues whether it was appropriate to hold a children’s drawing competition and dance events “when children are dying every day”, and called for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. On 8 July 2022, a court sentenced him to 7 years in prison under the law on spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian army.

Put very simply: he expressed compassion for children being killed and called for an end to the war.

And this produces the first almost absurd comparison:

Denis Gorin — about 7 years actually served for his first murder and cannibalism.

Alexei Gorinov — 7 years for speaking about children being killed and calling for an end to the war.

7 years. And 7 years.

Gorinov’s story did not end there. While already imprisoned, a new criminal case was opened against him over conversations with other patients in a prison hospital ward. Those conversations were recorded; Gorinov himself said he had been provoked.

But let us return to Denis Gorin.

What happened after his first early release?

He began killing again.

In November 2010, Gorin killed a man. According to the court ruling, after the murder he cut soft tissue from the victim’s limbs and ate it, then tried to hide the body in the Lyutoga River.

More crimes followed.

In 2013, Gorin was sentenced to 20 years and 10 months in a special-regime penal colony, and in 2018, after another murder case was considered and the sentences were combined, his final sentence became:

22 years.

So here we have a man repeatedly convicted of murder, who killed again after parole and once again consumed parts of a victim’s body.

And the result —

22 years.

Now consider Dmitry Lyamin.

His story began with an attempt to set fire to a window of a military enlistment office in Shuya. The window frame was scorched; no one was injured. The case was initially classified as property damage and was later reclassified as an act of terrorism. In 2023, Lyamin was sentenced to 8 years.

But while already imprisoned, a second case appeared.

It was based on conversations with other prisoners. Lyamin said that they approached him themselves and initiated conversations on subjects that were dangerous for him.

The conversations were recorded.

And it is not difficult to guess how recordings of supposedly accidental prison conversations usually appear. It looks very much like a prearranged operation: the right people approach, start the right conversation, the recording appears — and then becomes a new criminal case. A deliberately organized provocation cannot be stated as proven fact, but that is exactly the suspicion raised by the sequence of events described by Lyamin.

On 16 September 2026, the court sentenced him to another 17 years. His final sentence:

22 years.

The prosecutor had actually requested life imprisonment.

Then there is Daniil Klyuka, an art teacher.

According to him, everything began almost absurdly: he drew moustaches, horns and beards on officials’ photographs in newspapers. His colleagues saw the newspaper. A denunciation followed.

Later, investigators discovered a money transfer. Klyuka said he had sent money to his brother in Luhansk; according to him, the FSB demanded that he admit the money had been intended for Azov. The court sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

And here these lengthy criminal cases can be reduced to four lines:

Alexei Gorinov (for compassion for children being killed) — 7 years.
Dmitry Lyamin (for setting fire to a window frame and conversations with fellow prisoners) — 22 years.
Daniil Klyuka (for caricatures and, according to him, a transfer to his brother in Luhansk) — 20 years.
Denis Gorin — at least four murders, recidivism and cannibalism — about 7 years after his first conviction and ultimately 22 years.

Legally, these are different cases. But years of human life are measured in the same way.

And then Gorin’s story takes another turn.

From his last arrest in 2012 until his appearance outside prison in 2023, roughly 11 years had passed.

He had been sentenced to 22 years.

But he ended up at war.

In practice, the chain looked like this:

murders — cannibalism — 22 years — about 11 years behind bars — war — the possibility of freedom.

In Gorin’s case, the story ended with him returning to the war and being killed on 1 July 2024.

But what if he had not been killed?

He could quite realistically have returned home long before the end of his sentence.

And in Gorin’s case, this question is particularly frightening.

Because the experiment of releasing him early had already happened once.

He was paroled in April 2010.

A few months later, he killed again.

And after the murder, he cut parts from the victim’s body and ate them.

So the concern about what might have happened after another return is not a fantasy about someone who could theoretically reoffend.

He had already reoffended after being released.

And Gorin was far from the only prisoner for whom the war opened a path out of prison.

This is where politics stops being something distant.

It comes into your courtyard.

You may never have heard Lyamin’s name.

You may know nothing about Klyuka.

You may have no interest in Gorinov’s case.

But it is much harder not to notice a man convicted of repeated murders and eating human flesh if he returns to live next door to you years before the end of his sentence.

Would you calmly let your child go outside?

Would you calmly live next to someone who was supposed to remain in prison for many more years?

At the same time, society receives another message.

For unacceptable words — years in prison.
For opposing violence or corruption — years in prison.
A drawing, a money transfer or a conversation can lead to decades behind bars.

Meanwhile, under certain circumstances, a violent criminal can obtain a road out of prison through war — and also acquire further experience of violence in conditions where killing becomes part of warfare.

And this is where the question is no longer only about courts.

It is about which qualities the system suppresses and which ones it begins to use.

If people who think, argue and dissent are intimidated, imprisoned or pushed out of public life, while the capacity for extreme violence becomes a resource valued by the state, there is a risk of destroying society’s intellectual and human capital.

A society develops where people are able to think, argue, search for truth and disagree with those in power. When that brings years in prison while violence becomes a useful skill for the state, this is no longer merely a distortion of justice.

It is a distortion of the entire system of values.

And sooner or later it does not arrive as a news story.

It arrives in your courtyard.

Source: Mediazona: https://zona.media/news/2023/11/23/photo
Source: Novaya Gazeta: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2025/08/02/trizhdy-sudimyi-sakhalinskii-liudoed-denis-gorin-pogib-na-svo-news
Source: Mediazona: https://zona.media/article/2022/07/08/gorinov
Source: Mediazona: https://zona.media/news/2024/11/29/gorinov
Source: Political Prisoners Support. Memorial: https://memopzk.org/en/news/political-prisoner-dmitry-lyamin-sentenced-to-17-years-over-conversations-in-penal-colony/
Source: Mediazona: https://zona.media/news/2024/06/20/klyuka