The murderers took clothes, an old radio, some jewelry, and cash. But perhaps made careless by the vodka they had found in the fridge, they left behind two rough khaki jackets of the kind worn by soldiers in the Russian army. After killing the pensioners, the perpetrators sat down and laboriously pinned Andrei Ichko's 20 or so military decorations to one of the jackets. Suspicion fell on two young conscripts from the Volga region who had deserted from a garrison near the Ichkos' flat five days before the murders. After an intensive manhunt, they were tracked down to a hostel in Petrozavodsk, near the Finnish border.
Police say they confessed immediately.
The case has strengthened the growing association in the public mind between the armed forces and crime. The pampered military behemoth of Soviet days has sunk lower in both power and prestige than would have been thought possible five years ago. Analysts estimate that of its 78 divisions, the Russian army could now field and supply only one in full battle order. To mention the army is to conjure up an image of hunger and rags, of officers and their families struggling to survive in single dormitory rooms without being paid for months on end, of corruption, pilfering, bullying, and draft dodging on a huge scale. At the same time as the Ichko case, two soldiers at an air-defense base on the Pacific island of Sakhalin went AWOL after gunning down four of their colleagues.