A man brandishing a Molotov cocktail broke into Lenin’s mausoleum and nearly set fire to his preserved body. In Leningrad region, a man attempted to rape a 76-year-old woman who lived next door. In Moscow, a policeman shot a colleague. In Perm, a schoolgirl died after being raped and set on fire by schoolmates. In Yekaterinburg, the police are investigating the murder of a six-year-old boy whose foster mother kept his body in the fridge. In Vyshny Volochyok, a man raped a tomcat. In the Moscow metro, a woman broke a turnstile by repeatedly kicking it. In St. Petersburg, a man threw his neighbour out of the window. In Moscow’s Gorky Park, teenagers beat up a passer-by just for fun. A vegetable warehouse guard suspected of raping a teenager was found hiding an armed personnel carrier in his garden. A 13-year-old teenager killed a friend of his… This is a typical selection of recent Russian news. With the help of a criminologist, a psychologist and statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, we look into whether violence really is on the rise in Russia and whether the war is to blame for it.