Russian court imposes 25-year sentence on killer of submarine commander

A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced a Ukrainian man to 25 years in prison for the murder of an army recruitment officer and former submarine commander.

The convicted man, Sergei Denysenko, 65, was detained in July last year two days after the killing of recruitment official Stanislav Rzhitsky, shot dead while jogging in a park in the southern city of Krasnodar.

A court in Krasnodar found Denysenko guilty of murder and treason, saying he had joined an "organised group", whose leadership assigned him to kill Rzhitsky "over his activities in service", Russia's Investigative Committee said.

Denysenko was ordered to serve five years in prison and the rest of the sentence in a strict-regime penal colony. He was also ordered to pay five million rubles ($51,000) in compensation to the dead man's father.

A video released by the court showed Denysenko with white cropped hair and beard shaking his head and shrugging as the sentence was read.

Rzhitsky worked as the deputy to the Krasnodar city administration official in charge of mobilisation operations for the army.

Previously he was commander of the Krasnodar submarine.

Investigators said Denysenko learned the victim's routine then laid in wait for him in a wooded area of the park in the early morning and killed him with at least eight shots.

Denysenko, a qualified karate trainer, is Ukrainian and gained Russian citizenship a few months before the murder.

Ukrainian media linked Rzhitsky's murder to his role as submarine commander in the Black Sea fleet, reporting that his Krasnodar submarine in July 2022 took part in missile strikes on the city of Vinnytsia that killed 27 people.

Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported that Rzhitsky had left his submarine post in 2021.