The mother who killed three children in Yekaterinburg three years ago has been placed in a closed clinic.

      On Saturday, December 26 it will be exactly three years since the tragedy that shook the residents of Yekaterinburg a few days before the most eagerly awaited holiday in 2022.

      In the Bazhovsky residential complex, former MUGISO official Anastasia Petrova killed her three children, in whom, according to the child killer, demons had entered.

      Anastasia and her husband Vyacheslav, who until his retirement held a position in a police department, raised three children — sons aged 10 and 15 and a daughter who was not yet a year old at the time of her death. The couple had moved to Yekaterinburg from Verkhny Ufaley (Chelyabinsk region).

      The murder of the children occurred on the night of December 26 in Vyacheslav’s absence — his wife had asked him to leave and he went to Verkhny Ufaley to his parents. After strangling the younger children with the belt of her robe, Anastasia woke the older boy and offered him a choice: either “stay with your father and his demons,” or “go with me to paradise,” writes KP‑Yekaterinburg. Later neighbors said they heard the teenager crying: “I don’t want to die.”

      Anastasia sent a message to her mother saying she had killed the children; her mother called the police in the morning. She also left three suicide notes addressed to relatives. The owner of the apartment (the family were renting the flat) opened the door to the police.

      When officers arrived the mother was sleeping next to the children’s bodies and the police at first thought she was dead too.

      As the woman’s father, Vladimir Dremin, told KP‑Yekaterinburg, Anastasia Petrova, who was declared legally insane, is now in a state closed‑type clinic in Kazan. She is kept in a cell‑like room from which one can go out only to use the toilet and to take walks. According to Vladimir Dremin, the clinic has a crafts room where they do embroidery. The father hopes that someday Anastasia will be released from there.