After the collapse of the USSR, the names of organized crime groups began to appear in the media – “Tambov”, “Orekhov” and others. Own local organized crime groups also appeared in Ryazan. Its ranks were often filled by people with existing criminal experience, military discharges, and former athletes.
“Athletes are strong-willed people who have achieved something in sports but cannot find a place for themselves in their new lives. They decided to turn their power into money,” explains Dmitry Plotkin, who later worked as an investigator for particularly important cases in the Ryazan region prosecutor’s office.
The city was actually divided between several groups. The main ones are “Slonovsky” and “Ayrapetovsky”. The Airapetovskys took their name from the surname of their leader, former boxer Viktor Airapetov.
Competition between organized crime groups often took the bloodiest forms. In March 1993, in Strelka, boxer Airapetov (alias Vitya Ryazansky) defeated the leader of the “Slonovites” Vyacheslav Ermolov (alias the Elephant) in front of his “colleagues”. The retaliatory step of the “elephant men” was the raid on the bathhouse on Chapaev Street, where the “Ayrapetov men” were resting at that time.
The next round of clarification of relations between criminals took place in the Selmash bar in the recreation center of the Ryazselmash factory, where the Ayrapetov gang gathered. As Viktor Airapetov later stated during interrogation, only the “Slonovs” could organize this.
Shooting at Yesenin’s poems
“Our band started playing in this bar in 1991. Inflation is terrible, there is no money, but we have to support our family somehow. I also want to play,” recalls pianist and leader of the Feelin band Gennady Filin.
Gennady Filin learned much later that this bar was chosen by one of the main criminal groups in the city. “We would usually play jazz music, some international hits and something like Yesenin, for example, ‘Are you still alive, ma’am?’ – says.
The attack on the bar on the evening of November 25, 1993 was not improvised, but a well-planned operation using Kalashnikov assault rifles.
“I am a pianist, and the pianist always sits with his back to the audience. When the first shots were heard, I looked over my shoulder and saw flames coming from the machine gun barrels in the dusk. By that time we already knew what kind of people lived here. Gradually a funny thought came to my mind, I remember well – maybe we are not playing well?
People are dying and I say “let’s drink from the grief, where is the cup?” I continue playing the song, then I turn my head again and see the bass guitar slowly floating past me behind me.
The saxophonist and bassist were sitting facing the audience, and they reacted immediately. And I’m still playing. Then gradually a second thought appears in my head: “Gena, it’s time for you to jump too.”
The musicians hid behind a support column about a meter wide.
“For about two minutes everything happened. But then it seemed like an eternity. Then one of the “Ayrapetov’s men” was seriously injured, he stood up and began to give orders. They called the police, they called the ambulance. Immediately more “Ayrapetov’s men” came in came in. The police then came in. “Oh, what were you doing here?” “They come in, there is blood everywhere, corpses are lying in piles on the bar counter.”
Gennady Filin returned home on foot; He lived nearby. He said nothing to his wife and went to bed. In the morning I went to study at the institute. “It was at this point that the stress took over. I had to take leave from work. “But I survived, I felt it and I let it go,” he said.
Gennady Filin does not celebrate November 25 as his second birthday.
To be continued
Most of the band members who survived the club later died; The crime war did not end here. On March 31, 1994, one of the leaders of the Slonovskys, Nikolai Maksimov, was killed in the courtyard of a house on Kasimovskoe Highway. A few days later, during the funeral of the deceased in the Church of the Ascension of the Lord in Ryazan, the “Ayrapetovskys” tried to blow him up along with all the participants of the funeral. However, the radio-controlled explosive detonated prematurely in the killer’s hands.
The Slonovskys made a retaliatory move – they shot Vitya Ryazansky’s brother, Sergei Airapetov. They managed to reach the leader of the Ayrapetites in November 1995. His dismembered body was found in the Moscow region. However, it was rumored that Vitya Ryazansky faked his death and was able to hide abroad.
The bomb was delivered to the upper floor
Gangsters of the ’90s weren’t just tough on their rivals.
“There were two attempts to assassinate a businessman. He leaves the apartment and they shoot him in the face. He turned his head and the bullet had passed through both cheeks. The gun was small-caliber, it survived,” recalls former investigator Dmitry Plotkin.
The next time the gangsters used a radio-controlled explosive, which they placed on the roof of the passenger elevator in the house where the entrepreneur lived. “It exploded somewhere at the seventh floor level. He was lucky, he escaped with shell shock. The walls of the elevator burst and the cabin did not fall into the elevator shaft. “That was exactly the plan,” says the researcher.
The fight against bandits was complicated by the fact that many victims of racketeers did not cooperate with the investigation. Law enforcement agencies decided to counter “lawlessness” with innovative methods of work.
“Our course of action was to take a crime and try to investigate it. So they moved from crime to crime. But while the preliminary and judicial investigation continues, the victim will be intimidated, the witnesses will be intimidated, and they will give up or change their statements in court.
We decided to take a different route to identify gang members first. Then identify the “weak links” between them.
Then we managed to start talking,” Dmitry Plotkin describes his technique.
The first arrests of the Slonovskys began in the fall of 1996. This was followed by the arrest of the “Ayrapetovskis”, the “Arkhipovskis” and their representatives in regional centers in the region. Trials took place in the late 90s and early 2000s. For example, 22 convicts from the “Slonov” group were sentenced to 214 years in prison.
“Of course, not everyone was caught. Someone managed to escape abroad, to France, Germany. But we had to stop the activities of criminal gangs. And we succeeded,” says Dmitry Plotkin.
The Selmash pub was demolished ten years ago and has now been replaced by a housing development.