One of the Moscow Metro's top executives has been jailed for killing and dismembering his beauty queen wife.
Alexander Popov killed Ksenia Popova and buried her chopped-up body parts in a forest after she was killed when he struck her and she hit her head.
Popov, 37, and his wife had an argument about a planned holiday for her upcoming 30th birthday while their daughter played in a room nearby.
Ksenia was a beauty queen named Miss Kuzbass for 2012 in Russia's main coal mining region.
She was Popov's second wife and was killed not long after the Moscow Metro official had restarted a relationship with his first wife, who he now has a one-year-old child with.
Cut up with a saw when she was killed, it took police five months to find the body parts while Popov - a former deputy mayor of the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk - insisted she had taken a long holiday.
A law enforcement source said: "Three days [after she was killed] Ksenia Popova had been due to celebrate her birthday, a big one, her 30th.
"According to Popov, they had been planning to go on a family holiday to Turkey, but a few days earlier it had become clear that the trip would not go ahead. He claimed Ksenia got upset and started nagging him."
Popov attempted to dupe police by originally claiming that social media posts on her account were from her. He received 12 years in a strict penal colony for his awful crime.
"He pushed the woman, and Popova hit her head on the door when she fell, and died. Popov got scared and decided to get rid of the body."
He originally told police he had thrown the dismembered body parts into a river, but eventually revealed the place he had buried her.
Asking for leniency from the judge, Popov pleaded to be near his children, a six-year-old child he had with Ksenia and two children with his first wife.
The case comes amid alarming new statistics on domestic violence murders in Russia, said the Consortium of Women's Non-Governmental Associations.
The latest figures show 71 per cent of murdered women are killed by their partners, up from 65 per cent before the pandemic and Vladimir Putin ’s war in Ukraine.
Previously, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has described Russia's domestic violence laws as a "failure."
They said: "Women in Russia are in a situation of de-facto discrimination."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in December last year: "We believe current legislation provides all necessary tools to combat this evil and law enforcement agencies are making efforts.
"Of course, unfortunate and tragic incidents do occur," he said, adding: "I don't want to comment on the decision of the court."
