Dmitry Kopylov, 28, has been sent to a Russian penal colony after kidnapping a seven-year-old on his way to school before taking him to a horrifying basement where he sexually abused him for 52 days 

A paedophile has been jailed for 19 years for kidnapping a boy as he got out of his school bus and holding him hostage in a bleak underground bunker for 52 days.

Dmitry Kopylov, 28, has now been sent to a strict regime penal colony in Russia after being charged with 62 separate vile crimes against a seven-year-old, and another victim who was not held hostage.

A video shows the grim basement where the boy was held and sexually abused.

Kopylov's crimes included “committing sodomy and other sexual acts against a young boy” as well as making and distributing child pornography - offences which dated back to 2015. 

A judge ruled that Kopylov must undergo psychiatric treatment while serving his sentence of 19 years and 11 months in a high security prison.

The child was rescued and reunited with his parents in November 2020 following a tip off by Interpol based on intelligence from the West.

Russian special forces cut through a steel door and broke a window to enter the lair where he was held, a chilling low-ceilinged basement with bare walls, specially built to hold an abducted child.

The “brainwashed” boy “laughed with joy” when officers entered but later cried.

The entrance to the bunker 

Kopylov was snared after allegedly boasting about holding the boy in chats between paedophiles on the dark web.

The spooky underground bunker with a jail-style bed and a heater was sound insulated beneath Kopylov’s house in Makarikha, Vladimir region, some 185 miles from Moscow.

A hatch door led to an even lower level.

The paedophile lived upstairs.

When heavily armed officers stormed the building the suspect was sitting with the boy on a sofa.

Footage shows Kopylov being held by special forces officers.

While still in the hell hole, the boy - in the arms of a plainclothes Russian policeman - is heard berating the officers for smashing the window when they broke in.

Kopylov told Vesti TV in court that he felt “remorse” for his crimes.

“I would like to apologise to my victims,” he said.

“I did not behave like a human being, but I simply had no other choice.”

He would appeal his sentence because “I didn't kill anyone, I didn't make them disabled” and he would be held with murderers.

Asked why he felt compelled to kidnap the boy, the paedophile said: “I couldn't take it anymore….

“I wanted a child for too long.”

Computer geek Kopylov, from Suzdal, is the son of an electrician and a kindergarten teacher, both dead.

He had bought the house and was carrying out extensive renovations, including the construction of the underground bunker.

Colonel Irina Volk, of the Russian Interior Ministry, said the tip about the boy had been received “from foreign colleagues through Interpol channels”.