True Crime Cases in Russia

Russia holds some of the most studied cases in the serial-killer record, and the ones I've mapped here begin with Andrei Chikatilo, the Butcher of Rostov, who killed across Rostov-on-Don for twelve years before Soviet investigators caught up with him. Around him sit the predators of the late Soviet and post-Soviet decades: the Angarsk officer Mikhail Popkov, the Bitsa Park killer Alexander Pichushkin, and others who moved through provincial cities while police struggled to connect the deaths.

Other cases I've documented turn toward Russia's public and political violence. The killings of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, both shot in Moscow, run alongside mass-casualty events like the Beslan school siege and the Crocus City Hall attack near the capital.

Taken together, the cases mapped here trace how these crimes were investigated and remembered, from quiet regional towns to the streets of Moscow. Each entry is researched individually and placed where it happened.