#Napoleon re-enactor gets 12.5 years for dismembering student

A Russian professor who beheaded his student-turned-lover – and then planned to commit suicide as Napoleon Bonaparte – has been sentenced to more than 12 years in a stockade, according to a report.

Oleg Sokolov, 64, a former history professor at St. Petersburg State University, was found boozed up in a river in November 2019 with a bag containing the severed arms of 24-year-old Anastasia Yeshchenko.

Her severed head was discovered in an IKEA bag in his luxury apartment, while her torso and legs were recovered from the Moika River in St. Petersbug, East2West News reported.

Sokolov — Russia’s most famous Napoleon re-enactor — sat impassively while wearing a mask as a court in St. Petersburg sentenced him to 12 ½ years in a penal colony on Friday.

“He shot her, then tried to strangle her, but she continued showing signs of life so he shot her again,” Judge Yulia Maksimenko said, adding that he shot her four times with a rifle before dismembering her with a knife and saw.

One of the bullets, which were fired from a Soviet-era TOZ-17 stylized as a 19th century cavalry rifle, went through the woman’s right eye, East2West reported.

After killing her and hiding her body parts under a bed, Sokolov partied with friends.

“His friends visited him, they all drank cognac,” the court heard.

Once they left, he beheaded and dismembered the corpse in his bathroom.

Sokolov was caught when he was found in the icy river trying to dispose of his lover’s arms, which he had chopped off at her shoulder.

The disgraced academic pleaded guilty to her murder, but told the court it had not been premeditated and that the PhD student had driven him to “a state of complete insanity” by making insulting remarks about his children from another relationship.

It emerged that he had suspected Yeshchenko of cheating on him — and became violent when she told him she planned on going to a friend’s birthday party.

She had told him that her freedom must be respected, but the judge said Sokolov was fiercely jealous amid the 40-year age difference.

Sokolov — who had lectured at the Sorbonne and was awarded the Legion of Honour order of merit by France – and Yeschenko had both taken part in Napoleonic re-enactions in full historic regalia.

Earlier, Sokolov said in court: “I want to express deep and complete remorse for what I have done. I not only believe that I must be punished, I want to be punished to atone for the crime I committed.”