A notorious gang leader sues Russia twice for army enlistment refusal

The leader of the Tver Wolves gang, one of the most notorious murderers, has twice sued the Russian state after being denied enlistment to fight in Ukraine. Aleksander Ageev became infamous for the murder of a Russian singer. It was too much for the military authorities, who issued an instruction not to recruit prisoners with life sentences.

The District Court in Moscow confirmed to the media that Aleksander Ageev submitted applications in September and December 2023 for permission to join the army and be sent to the front in Ukraine. After being denied, he sued the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Military Registration and Enlistment Office in Tver. When he lost those cases, he filed a complaint to the head of the Human Rights Council, arguing that his constitutional rights were being violated.

Documents reveal that the military refused Ageev’s enlistment because, since the summer of 2023, the Russian Ministry of Defense has been instructed not to recruit prisoners with life sentences. The RBC agency and the independent investigative magazine Verstka reported the matter.

Aleksander Ageev has been serving a life sentence for 15 years. He carried out contract killings, committed robberies, and led the organized crime group Tver Wolves. In 2019, he admitted to participating in the murder of well-known Russian singer Mikhail Krug (the crime took place in 2002).

According to investigators, the singer was killed because he refused to pay protection money from his concerts to the gangsters. The murder case and the subsequent revelation of the perpetrators were followed by all of Russia and reported by international media. Mikhail Krug was a bard singing about prisoners and crime. The gangster was serving his sentence in the Polar Bears penal colony in the north-central part of Russia.

Even for Russia, it's too much. a hundred murders after returning

Meanwhile, the Verstka service connects the refusal to enlist Ageev with a series of crimes committed by veterans of the so-called special operation. They reported that prisoners were recruited into Wagner PMC units, and those who survived bloody battles were pardoned. In January 2023, experts from the Rus Sitting organization warned that 3,000 to 5,000 criminals might return “to criminal circulation.”

Reports from Russian media confirm that the most desperate group of convicts decided to participate in the fighting. Here, the only consolation for the Russians themselves will be the fact that the survival rate on the front in Ukraine for prison units was minimal.

The predictions have come true. At least 45 pardoned war participants were murdered after returning to free life, and 24 of them are repeat murderers, journalists of Verstka determined at the end of April. Veterans who were not prisoners also got into fights, caused car accidents while drunk, and committed murders of family members in fits of rage.

In total, at least 107 people were killed by Russian war veterans, and as many were severely injured, reports the independent Russian portal Verstka.

Services and media often do not report on the war past of murder perpetrators, and the crimes themselves are treated as standard criminal reports and therefore remain unnoticed, warn the authors.

They also highlighted a case of an exceptionally lenient sentence. The court in Belgorod sentenced Aleksey Churdailo, a veteran of the war in Ukraine, to only 8 years in prison for murdering a colleague during a drunken discussion about the achievements of the Russian army. The victim was stabbed 21 times in the chest and neck. The soldier then used a rope to pull the body out of the window onto the street and hid it in a sewer.

The victim was declared missing, but the crime came to light. A few weeks later, during a chance encounter, the victim’s fiancée noticed Churdailo had the victim’s phone. The Russian court mitigated the sentence, citing the accused’s merits as a combat veteran.