The Russian military historian man was allegedly seen throwing his dead lover’s body parts into a river after murdering her at his home.  

Oleg Sokolov, 63, is believed to have shot dead his 24-year-old lover Anastasia Yeschenko before dismembering her body. 

Police say Sokolov disposed of the body parts in St Petersburg’s Moyka river before drunkenly falling into the water himself. 

He was hauled out of the river suffering from hypothermia and carrying a backpack containing a woman’s arms.  

Sokolov, a leading historian at Vladimir Putin’s former university who liked to dress as Napoleon, yesterday confessed to the murder which has shocked Russia.

‘He has admitted his guilt,’ Sokolov’s lawyer Alexander Pochuev said, adding he regretted what he had done and was co-operating. 

The new CCTV footage allegedly shows him throwing three packages into the icy water near his home, as an unsuspecting cyclist walks past. 

When he came back with more body parts, he fell into the river as he tried to dispose of the arms, it is claimed.  

New details today emerged in the case, with claims that the professor hosted a party in his luxury apartment with his lover’s body locked in a spare room.  

Yeschenko had been shot at least four times with a rifle after an argument, it is claimed. 

Police discovered Anastasia’s decapitated body and a blood-stained saw at the historian’s home.  

A custody hearing was due to be held today with Sokolov under criminal investigation for murder and facing a possible 15 years in prison. 

Her father Oleg Yeschenko said: ‘I was not personally acquainted with Sokolov. But Anastasia never said anything bad about him.

‘So what happened shocked us.’ 

Sokolov met his first wife – also called Anastasia – when he was a 34-year-old schoolteacher and she was his teenage student, according to reports. She later died of cancer.

The professor, who works at St Petersburg State University, is separated from his second wife Anna.

She is said to have known about his relationship with Yeschenko, who was another of his students.

Anastasia’s brother said that she had called him to say she had rowed with Sokolov after she said she wanted to attend a birthday party for a male friend, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda.

She had been ‘crying’ and he had ‘told her to leave him at once,’ he said. 

Sokolov is well known for re-enacting parts of the Napoleonic wars and there are reports that he planned to end his own life while dressed as the French emperor. 

Both he and his lover studied French history and liked to wear period costumes, with Sokolov dressing up as Napoleon.

Students described Sokolov as both a talented lecturer who could impersonate the French emperor and his generals and a ‘freak’ who called his lover ‘Josephine’ and liked to be addressed as ‘Sire’. 

There were claims that Sokolov had shown hostile behavior in the past but that complaints had been ignored. 

‘What happened is simply monstrous,’ a Saint Petersburg State University lecturer said. 

The professor was president of the Russian Association of Military History and is now a member of the body’s scientific council.

He received France’s Legion d’Honneur in 2003, and had previously taught at the prestigious Paris-Sorbonne University.