News Desk
A Russian court sentenced a distinguished historian known for re-enacting Napoleonic battle scenes to 12 and a half years in jail on Friday after convicting him for the murder of his young student lover, whom he dismembered. Oleg Sokolov, 64, a former history professor at St Petersburg State University, was found in a river in November last year with a bag containing the severed arms of Anastasia Yeshchenko, a 24-year-old postgraduate. Sokolov pleaded guilty to her murder, but told the court it had not been premeditated and that she had driven him to “a state of complete insanity” by making insulting comments about his children from another relationship.