A smirking Russian cannibal has been jailed for a dozen years after killing a 27 year old mother of two - then cooking and eating her heart with a glass of red wine.

Alexey Yastrebov, 35, was convicted of stabbing his lover Ekaterina Nikiforova 129 times with scissors after a 'quarrel'.

He cut out her Adam's apple with a kitchen knife.

Then he gouged out her heart and left lung, and boiled them on the stove in his cramped Stalin-era rented flat in Krasnoyarsk, a court heard.

Alexey Yastrebov, 35, (pictured) was convicted of killing his young lover before boiling her heart

Ekaterina Nikiforova, 27 was stabbed 129 times with scissors after a 'quarrel'

With a 'strange smile' he told his friend soon after the gruesome murder: 'I told you that I would eat her heart. So I did.'

The horrified friend said: 'Next to him was a bottle.

'He told me how he drank wine as he ate her heart.'

The evil killer was brought into court in handcuffs wearing a top emblazoned with the word 'Obey'.

He begged 'forgiveness' from his victim's pensioner mother Lyubov Timoshenko.

Yastrebov declared: 'I hope her relatives and friends will someday be able to forgive me - because I will never be able to forgive myself.'

The court heard that Ms Nikiforova's two young children Alina, nine, and her sister Anastasia, three, had be traumatised after her murder

Soon after the gruesome murder Yastrebov told his friend: 'I told you that I would eat her heart. So I did.'

But the grieving mother hit back: 'How can we forgive him for this?

'Who will give her children back their mother?'

Her nine year old granddaughter Alina remains on medication after the loss of her mother in March, she said.

'She just cannot cope,' said the victim's mother.

She is now raising Alina and her sister Anastasia, three.

Timoshenko attacked the sentence stating that in the absence of the death penalty, he should have been jailed for life rather than a dozen years and compulsory psychiatric treatment.

Yastrebov lived in a run down flat in Krasnoyarsk, on the Yenisei River, Siberia (pictured)

He boiled Ms Nikiforova's heart on the stove in his apartment (pictured)

After killing his lover, he phoned the owner of the flat Zhanna Avdeeva, 31, and told her: 'Call the police and ambulance'

This knife was found inside Yastrebov's Stalin-era rented flat

'I cannot forgive him. He will live, and but my daughter will not.

'He deserved a life sentence since there is no higher punishment.'

Earlier the killer had told the court: 'I beg for forgiveness, although what apologies can there be?

'I brought such big grief.

'But it was not intentional.'

After killing his lover, he phoned the owner of the flat Zhanna Avdeeva, 31, and told her: 'Call the police and ambulance.

The victim's mother (pictured) told the court that she could not accept his apology

During the gruesome dismembering he also cut out her Adam's apple

'I'm lying in the blood.

'Next to me is a corpse.'

When paramedics arrived he told them: 'There's a heart cooking on the stove.'

Before calling Avdeeva, he had tried and failed to kill himself by plunging scissors into his own neck, the court was told.

She said: 'This poor woman was lying in the same room,' said the flat owner.

'As well as her chest cut open, her neck was slashed.

He was also sentenced to compulsory psychological therapy for Ms Nikiforova's (pictured) murder

'He had cut out her Adam's apple. I couldn't look at all this.'

Evgeny Avdeev, 31, Zhanna's brother, said the cannibal was his close friend, and he could never imagine he could do something so 'evil'.

'My hair is standing on end,' he said.

'I think they must have been drinking and some conflict happened.'

Avdeeva called a priest to 'cleanse' the flat after the killing.