A husband's terrifying bout of jealousy left his wife maimed after he cut off her fingers one by one with an axe before slashing one hand off completely in a forest outside Moscow. The blood-chilling torture came after the woman asked for a divorce.

Margarita, 26, from the city of Serpukhov outside Moscow, survived an hour of medieval torture at the hands of Dmitry, her husband and father of their two boys. He first shattered both of her wrists, then began methodically chopping off her fingers on one hand, ultimately severing it altogether with an axe. He made sure Margarita would stay awake by beating her so that she would not lose consciousness.

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After Dmitry’s fit of rage subsided, the man took belated mercy on Margarita and drove her to the hospital, where he confessed to the crime and was taken into police custody.

Luckily for Margarita, the surgeons did what few thought possible, managing to reattach her hand.

The woman, who remains in hospital, told Russian media it was her expressing the wish to divorce Dmitry that set him off. Dmitry, who was arrested on charges of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm, told the court he dreaded the divorce because he did not want to live apart from the children.

Although it is up to a court to decide with which parent children should stay, in most cases in Russia it rules in the mother’s favor.

Meanwhile, accounts given by Margarita’s relatives suggest she had been sitting on a ticking time bomb since marrying Dmitry, who was jealous to the point of being paranoid. According to Margarita’s brother, Ilia, Dmitry had already taken his wife to the woods once and threatened her with a knife over her alleged unfaithfulness, and even made her pass a lie detector test, which failed to confirm his suspicions. It was fear, not affection, that kept Margarita at her abuser's side, Ilia said. While the family sounded the alarm more than a few times, every time Dmitry would calm down and act as if nothing had happened.

What finally tipped him over the edge, aside from Margarita's wish for divorce, was reportedly a couple of texts he saw her exchange with a male co-worker.