Vasily has no regrets about his old job as an executioner,...

Vasily has no regrets about his old job as an executioner, but still cannot bring himself to slaughter animals on his small farm.
Out of work since 1996, when Russia stopped enforcing capital punishment, Vasily, whose surname was not given, told the weekly Argumenti i Fakti that for many of his 25 years on the job even his close friends and family did not know what he was doing.
"I was doing my duty," he said of the 50 convicts he had shot in the back of the head with a pistol. "I have no regrets."
When he quit, he wrote in his resignation letter: "Execution by shooting is no longer practised. Society no longer has need of my profession."
The death penalty is still on the books in Russia, but former President Boris Yeltsin ordered a halt to executions in 1996. The Constitutional Court also ruled that courts could not hand down death sentences as long as some Russian regions had juries and others did not. But that hurdle is set to vanish in 2002 when reforms set up jury trials countrywide. Public opinion overwhelmingly favours capital punishment, and death penalty opponents worry that the Yeltsin-era moratorium may not hold up.
"I confess that each execution left a bitter after-taste. Death was passing through me," Vasily said. "Now at last it is possible to sleep easily and not torment myself with thoughts that I have become a murderer."