Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the names of organized crime groups began appearing in the media, including Tambov and Orekhov, among others. Local criminal factions also emerged in Ryazan. Their members often came from backgrounds in crime, military service, or professional sports, and many carried forward their discipline into illicit enterprises.
Athletes, described by Dmitry Plotkin — who later served as an investigator for important cases in the Ryazan region prosecutor’s office — were seen as strong-willed individuals who excelled in sports but found little room for themselves in their new lives. They decided to translate their physical power into money-making schemes.
Ryazan effectively split into competing groups, the two predominant ones being the Slonovsky clan and the Ayrapetovsky clan. The Ayrapetovskys traced their name to their leader, a former boxer named Viktor Airapetov.
Criminal factions clashed violently. In March 1993, in Strelka, the boxer Airapetov defeated the Slonovites’ leader, Vyacheslav Ermolov, in front of his associates. In retaliation, the Slonovtsy raided a bathhouse on Chapaev Street where the Ayrapetovskys were resting.
The next confrontation occurred at the Selmash bar in the Ryazselmash recreation center, where the Ayrapetov gang had gathered. Viktor Airapetov later stated during interrogation that the Slonovs were the ones capable of organizing such a gathering.
Shooting at Yesenin’s poems
The band had begun performing in this bar in 1991. Inflation was brutal and money scarce, yet the group pressed on to support their families by playing. The pianist and band leader, Gennady Filin, recalls the moment vividly.
Filin would later learn that the bar had become a target for one of the city’s major criminal groups. The ensemble usually played jazz, international pieces, and occasional works by Yesenin, such as Are you still alive, ma’am.
The bar attack on the evening of November 25, 1993, was not improvised; it was a carefully planned assault employing Kalashnikov rifles. The pianist later described turning his back to the audience as the first shots rang out. He saw flames erupt from the gun barrels in the fading light and wondered if they might not be playing well after all.
As people lay dying, he asked, with a grim humor, where the cup for grief might be. He kept playing for a moment longer, then turned to see his bass guitar drifting past him. The saxophonist and bassist reacted instantly, while Filin kept playing. A second thought then struck him: it was time to jump to safety.
The musicians found shelter behind a narrow support column. For what felt like an eternity, chaos raged for about two minutes before the violence began to subside. One Ayrapetov soldier was seriously wounded and gave orders for help as reinforcements arrived. The scene turned chaotic as police and ambulances poured in; victims lay scattered across the floor and bar counters.
Filin walked home, choosing silence for the next morning as he prepared to study. The trauma lingered, forcing him to take leave from work. Yet he endured, and the memory remained intense, never quite fading for him. He does not mark November 25 as a birthday, but as a brutal reminder of what happened.
To be continued
Most of the surviving band members would not live long. The city’s crime war continued. On March 31, 1994, Nikolai Maksimov, a Slonovsky leader, was killed in a courtyard on Kasimovskoe Highway. A few days later, during Maksimov’s funeral at the Church of the Ascension of the Lord in Ryazan, the Ayrapetovskys attempted to blow up the attendees with a radio-controlled device, an effort that detonated prematurely in the killer’s hands. The Slonovskys retaliated by assassinating Vitya Ryazansky’s brother, Sergei Airapetov, and by pursuing the Ayrapetov leader to November 1995, when his dismembered body was found in the Moscow region. It was rumored that Vitya Ryazansky had faked his death to flee abroad.
The era’s violence was not limited to direct assaults. Gangsters of the 1990s used other methods as well. In one case, a businessman was shot as he exited his apartment, a body double aimed with a small-caliber pistol, and the attacker escaped. In another incident, a radio-controlled explosive was placed on the roof of the elevator in the entrepreneur’s building, detonating at roughly seventh floor level and leaving the victim with shell shock. The elevator cabin survived the blast, foiling the attackers’ goal. The plan, investigators say, was precise and deadly, and it required a broad view of city life to reach its targets. The challenges of pursuing such criminals included the reluctance of many victims to cooperate with investigators. Authorities adapted by reshaping their approach: they began by identifying gang members first, then tracing their weak links to uncover the broader network. This method eventually unlocked more confessions and arrests. The first rounds of arrests of the Slonovskys began in the fall of 1996, followed by the Ayrapetovskis, Arkhipovskis, and their affiliates in regional centers. Trials stretched through the late 1990s and early 2000s, with estimates indicating that 22 convicts from the Slonov group received sentences totaling 214 years. The work did not end with captures; some fled abroad to places like France and Germany. Still, the authorities persisted, determined to curb gang activity. The Selmash pub, once a hub for these events, was demolished about a decade ago and replaced with a housing development. (Source: investigative records and testimonies compiled by Dmitry Plotkin)