07:12, April 5, 2024
Source: MeduzaPersonal archive of Svetlana Bulavina
This text contains descriptions of scenes of violence. If this is unacceptable to you, please do not read it.
Ilya Bakharev was sure that his first trip to the front was unsuccessful. In April 2023, a 36-year-old Novosibirsk resident signed up for the Redut PMC and ended up in Bakhmut, which at that time was practically surrounded by Russian troops. The commander who met the recruits “first of all took promedol from their first aid kits and gave himself a dose,” recalls Svetlana Bulavina in a conversation with Bereg . She lived with Bakharev for many years – they considered each other spouses, but did not formalize the marriage.
Being “in an inadequate condition,” the mercenary demanded that the recruits “place a howitzer in an open field – no fortifications, no tree, no bush.” And in response to the soldiers’ objections that they would “be immediately unwound [by the enemy],” he replied: “You already came here to die! The order is not discussed.” When the first artillery crew was actually “scattered with artillery ” by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Bakharev left for Donetsk and signed a refusal to serve.
Bakharev considered it “shameful” that he could not gain a foothold in the PMC – and began to look for an opportunity to return to the front. “Now the summer is over, we’ll baptize the child, we’ll finish the renovations in the apartment – and that’s it, I’ll sign [the contract] with the Ministry of Defense,” Bulavina recounts.
Bakharev made his way into military service to “wash away the stain from his biography,” Svetlana explains: a long prison sentence for drug trafficking. His relatives are convinced that the police planted marijuana on Ilya: “But when he wrote complaints about the circumstances of the arrest, no one took them into account. It’s like, ‘You don’t put someone in prison for nothing’.”
“Ilya said that “he doesn’t want to be a prisoner for the children,” recalls Svetlana; Their son Lev and Bakharev were born shortly after the invasion began. “No, I’ll serve now, and when I return with the Order of Courage, I’ll be able to go to any court and receive compensation for the eight years I served.”
On September 22, 2023, Bakharev actually signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense and ended up in the 164th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 25th Army . Almost without preparation, he was sent to the area of the village of Grechishkino near Novoaidar, Lugansk region – to the repair company of unit 11740. The soldiers lived right in the forest – in one tent and sleeping bags thrown around it.
Platoon commander Rasulzhon Makhmudov appointed Ilya as chief of guard – and instructed him to arrange the location before the onset of cold weather. Bakharev dug dugouts, set up security posts – and introduced prohibition. “Because I already saw [in Redoubt] what this leads to,” says Svetlana. – [In the new place] in Ilya’s company there were people who were sitting, drinking, and drinking: they chased each other with an ax and threw knives. He quickly found an approach: he dug a hole – like a sobering-up station – and let the drunks down there until they came to their senses.”
Another reason for Ilya’s pride, besides the field sobering-up station, was the red pit bike of the Chinese brand Kayo , purchased at the place of duty . Ilya took many photographs with him; in one of them, a motorcycle is displayed right on the edge of a shallow pit, in which three men in camouflage are sitting dejectedly.
Having adjusted his life, Bakharev decided “not to sit out” in the repair company, but to transfer “from the rear to attack aircraft or into reconnaissance,” Bulavina says. According to her memoirs, Ilya reasoned like this: “I came here to serve, not to wander around. And when I return from the war, they will perceive me differently.”
“Here I won’t receive the Order of Courage”
In mid-October, Bakharev and Makhmudov left for Rostov to buy stoves, pillows and blankets for the winter. Without the supervision of the platoon commander and the chief of guard, the soldiers in Grechishkino went on a drinking binge and got drunk , recalls Bulavina. Returning to the location, Ilya discovered that the entire barely organized life was “in a mess”: “Puke, crap, covered in vomit and rolltons. The furniture is broken. Tactical headphones and shoes were eaten by rats.”
Bakharev scolded his colleagues, but the command, political officer Vladislav Iselkov, suddenly stood up for the soldiers . “Aren’t you taking on too much? Why are you treating the guys like that? Well, we got drunk and drunk – no big deal. Everyone needs to rest,” Svetlana retells the objections of the deputy company commander.
Bakharev did not agree with the political officer. After a quarrel, he sent Ilya to the front line – to guard an ammunition warehouse in the Lugansk city of Rubezhnoye (at that time – about 20 kilometers from the site of fierce fighting) and load shells into vehicles heading a little further to the front, to Kremennaya. The contractor took this as a punishment, Svetlana recalls: “I won’t receive the Order of Courage here.”
However, Bakharev approached the new task responsibly – at least, “they also stopped drinking in Rubezhnoye,” says Bulavina. And Ilya continued to send his bride photos and videos from the front line – in one of them he films the city from the window of a VPK-Ural armored car. For three minutes, not a single entire building appears in the frame; in the finale, Bakharev turns the smartphone towards himself, smiles and throws a jumbo at the camera.
Meanwhile, conflicts with the command continued – now not with the political officer, but with the company commander, a 57-year-old graduate of a Soviet military university, Konstantin Barilenko, who began serving (also in the repair troops) back in the USSR. He returned to the Russian army with the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine – and after a long civilian career: Barilenko worked in Novosibirsk companies producing vegetable juices and packaging, was deputy director for security at the Novonikolaevsky dairy plant, and in 2021 he was nominated for deputy in Iskitimsky City Council from the Party of Pensioners .
Bakharev and Barilenko had a whole series of clashes: the commander set tasks in a raised tone and “without explaining anything.” “He gave orders that were impossible to carry out,” says Bulavina. “Once I asked him to cut a lot of firewood in a couple of hours, but without a chainsaw it wouldn’t have been possible to finish it in a day.” Ilya had to quickly call a taxi and buy this saw in some store – all on his own.”
Bulavina learned more about the conflict at the end of November 2023, when she arrived in Severodonetsk to spend his leave with Ilya. As a gift, she brought a new body armor (“lightweight, just right for stormtroopers”) and wove “spiders” into a “huge” camouflage network. They spent almost all the time in a rented apartment, not going anywhere due to shelling and an early curfew. “And the local population looks at it negatively,” says Svetlana. “They don’t like either the military or the Russians there.”
On the streets of the city, the couple managed to take only two photos: in both, Ilya and Svetlana are hugging. Now Bulavina admits that she barely recognized the usually cheerful Bakharev: he arrived in Severodonetsk already depressed and silent.
“He was restless,” she recalls. “He had a broken arm and a torn back while loading ammunition: the three of them were doing this and simply couldn’t cope physically. He mentioned that he “has some misunderstandings with Barilenko: he doesn’t like the way I talk to him.” When Svetlana clarified what it was about, Ilya explained the conflict like this: “I’m talking to him as an equal. Because he’s in no condition to give orders: he’s drunk all the time.”
Just before leaving, Ilya scared the bride. “He let me photograph the details of [his platoon commander Rasulzhon] Makhmudov,” recalls Bulavina. – And he says: “If something happens to me, all the questions should be directed to him.” “What should happen to you?” – “Well, let you have it just in case.”
Returning from leave, Bakharev asked the command to send another person to Rubezhnoye to load ammunition. As Svetlana says, in response, Barilenko “sent two scumbags to ‘talk’ and ‘sort it out’,” his colleagues – sergeant, deputy platoon commander Dmitry Semenikhin and private Nikolai Sazhin, who was made chief of the guard in Grechishkino instead of Ilya.
From Rubezhnoye Sazhin and Semenikhin “left with nothing,” says Bulavina: “Ilya did not give them the right to pump.” On the same day, Barilenko sent a car for Bakharev and demanded that he return to Grechishkino. “They’re pulling me back because they don’t like something about the way I’m behaving,” Svetlana recounts her penultimate conversation with Ilya. “Barylenko said that “he will send me there – I don’t know where, and that’s where I’ll have to prove myself.”
Svetlana encouraged Ilya: “You have camouflage nets, you have a bulletproof vest, you have thermal underwear – you can handle it, no matter where they take you.”
The last time they spoke was late in the evening of November 29—it was already midnight in Novosibirsk. Ilya, who had just returned to his former location after a month and a half break, noticed that in Grechishkino “now there is complete fucked up going on.”
“They came to kill him while he was sleeping”
In the fall of 2023, a gang of extortionists was formed in Grechishkino, as follows from the criminal case materials at the disposal of Bereg , stories from Bakharev’s colleagues, as well as a statement from Ilya’s family to the Investigative Committee.
The group of extortionists included the same Sazhin and Semenikhin, as well as military personnel with the call signs “Jamal”, “Azar”, “Sokol” and “Afonya”. All six settled in one of the dugouts equipped by Ilya and, according to the soldiers, every night they “attacked the camp”: they looked for colleagues who had already drunk, beat them (“they could even break their spines”), and then demanded money from them – in as a “fine”.
The “fine for drunkenness” was one hundred thousand rubles; the same “cost” for permission to travel to Rostov to “issue a salary card or SIM card”; To get to the hospital, military personnel had to pay extortionists 150 thousand. In addition, it was possible to give a bribe “in order not to go to the front line” (“Novaya Gazeta Europe” has already described how at the front they buy vacations and the opportunity not to participate in assaults).
The extortion took place under the leadership of platoon commander Makhmudov; Later they allegedly found one and a half million rubles “sewn into a chair” on him . Company medic Stanislav Podkosov claims that Rasulzhon “tried not to show off” and take bribes “beautifully,” but the commander did not always succeed: “Once the guys went for vodka – so he punched one in the face (we then gave him a rattle “Fara” ), but he didn’t touch the second one and said: “You’ll owe money.”
Barilenko patronized the gang, Bulavina is convinced, and disposed of its members as his own henchmen: “I am sure that Barilenko gave the order to Sazhin and Semenikhin to call Ilya from Rubezhnoye back to Grechishkino – and there they were ‘sieged’.”
The materials of the criminal case say nothing about the role of Barilenko, but the actions of Sazhin and Semenikhin are described in detail. Closer to midnight on November 29, they entered the dugout where Ilya was spending the night, threw him out of bed, and began beating him “with a wooden stool to which a log was tied.” “They came to kill him while he was sleeping,” says Svetlana. “He didn’t even have time to say anything.”
Ilya was still unable to get up from the floor. “He was killed not by two or three, but by six (nevertheless, only two are accused in the case – note by Berega) . And he had no chance to survive,” Bulavina is sure. — The main blows are to the head. A stool, an ax; blunt, chopped. Sazhin and Semenikhin started, and the rest walked around, joined in, and filmed. They also jumped on his head. They jumped on everything.”
By dawn, Bakharev’s ribs were already broken, “literally scattered,” says Bulavina. When one of the fragments pierced his left lung, he wheezed – then they simply covered the dying man with a towel. They continued to drink in this dugout until they left for the formation: as one of the witnesses with the call sign “Kashchei” recalls, Semenikhin and Sazhin “poured vodka on Ilya’s head and mocked him.”
At two o’clock in the afternoon – “when Ilya stopped wheezing” – his colleagues “pronounced death,” says Svetlana. According to the conclusion of an expert from the Starobelsky interdistrict department of forensic medicine, Bakharev died from traumatic shock, cerebral hemorrhage, as well as fractures of the ribs, hyoid bone and larynx.
During almost 14 hours of torture, only his colleague with the call sign “Gucci” tried to intercede for Bakharev – as punishment for this, he himself was beaten, and then sent to dig a grave for Ilya.
“As soon as they dug it up, they brought it back”
On the afternoon of November 30, they began destroying evidence in Grechishkino. The wooden floor in the dugout was soaked with blood; in order to get rid of its traces, they had to change the boards there and even dig up the ground underneath them. Ilya’s clothes, his military ID and SNILS card were burned . Those who were not present at the murder were told that “a drunken Bakharev escaped from the unit and was put on the wanted list” – and for the sake of plausibility, they even printed out an identification card for him .
Ilya’s things were “looted and stolen,” says Bulavina: “A silver chain, a new razor, knives, a generator, cash, cards – everything was gone. They didn’t take it – because they didn’t find it – only 35 thousand [rubles] folded in an envelope, which Ilya’s team from Rubezhnoye collected for Makhmudova for the TV. They wanted to butter him up so much that they wouldn’t be sent anywhere else – they would be left in the same composition in which they had already worked.”
Semenikhin and a serviceman with the call sign “Jamal” (his name is not known to Bereg) meanwhile threatened company medic Podkosov. If they started asking about Ilya’s disappearance, he was required to say that Bakharev “escaped from the unit under the influence of alcohol and drugs.” ““Jamal” pushed my forehead with his hand and said: “Look who you tell [the truth] – I will personally kill you,” recalls Stanislav.
All these details became known to the family not from the official investigation (a criminal case against Sazhin and Semenikhin was opened on December 8), but thanks to the initiative of Bakharev’s former colleagues at Redut. They were stationed not far from Grechishkino – and rumors that “Ilya was seen severely beaten” reached them already on November 30. Then the mercenaries contacted the military police of Novoaidar and spent three days trying to ensure that they, along with the military police and riot police, were allowed into the location of the repair company.
During these three days, the family appealed “to all possible authorities: the military police, the prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to all high-ranking commanders known to us,” the family’s appeal to the Investigative Committee says, but “assistance was provided only on December 3.”
The case was eventually opened by the 124th Military Investigation Department of the Russian Investigative Committee. There, Bulavina adds, “the guys [from Redoubt] were given instructions that they were also involved in investigative activities and had the right to interview those involved.” “That is, [the official security forces] had to be led by the hand and shown everything,” Svetlana is convinced.HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?
During the three days that the security forces tried to get into Grechishkino, Sazhin and Semenikhin fled, taking with them machine guns and at least eight grenades. On December 2, both stopped by Novoaydar to present their local girls with a bouquet of flowers and say goodbye. “We won’t see you again! Problems – we need to leave,” Svetlana recounts.
Bakharev’s colleagues showed the security forces the place where he was buried. The body was buried at the edge of the forest, where four country roads crossing Grechishkino merge into one leading towards Severodonetsk. There, in the thickets, Ilya’s phone was found, “twisted into a ram’s horn.”
Bakharev’s body was lifted from the ground in order to be examined and reburied. From the people who dug up her husband, Svetlana knows that his grave “turned out to be very small.” “He’s about two meters tall, but he was so broken that they managed to put all of Ilya in his own sleeping bag and place him in a hole,” says Bulavina. “The morgue said they had to ‘straighten him’—posthumously realign the bones.”
Svetlana saw Bakharev’s body already in the Novosibirsk crematorium, where they opened the zinc coffin. “When I saw him in person… The body was withered – and the head became somehow round and black and purple. Unrecognizable,” recalls Bulavina. “When we contacted the Rostov morgue, we asked that he be embalmed and put in uniform. But in fact, he was lying there, not washed, not dressed: just as they dug him up – covered in soil and blood – they brought him back.”
“I’ll see you in the next world and I’ll tell you everything.”
Sazhin and Semenikhin have not yet been detained; Bulavina is convinced that the criminal case opened against them by the 124th military investigative department of the RF IC is not being investigated. The investigator stopped answering messages and calls, says Svetlana, and in response to the family’s appeals to Prosecutor General Krasnov, the head of the Investigative Committee Bastrykin, Defense Minister Shoigu and President Putin, “they received replies.”
To draw attention to the unsolved case, the family launched a petition demanding “that V.V. Putin personally take control of the murder of I.M. Bakharev.” “We can’t be helped, but maybe we can save other guys,” says the appeal, which was signed by 1,624 people.
In unit 11740, where Bakharev was killed, military personnel actually disappeared several times and died under unclear circumstances. Thus, Ukrainian journalist Andrey Tsaplienko reported in October 2023 that soldiers Dmitry Korobitsin and Damir Mazitov were “strangled by their own colleagues with a belt” (and the command allegedly tried to cover up this murder). Relatives are also looking for Viktor Kuznetsov, who went missing a month earlier, in September.
Bakharev’s family contacted two more families whose loved ones disappeared without a trace from unit 11740 in the fall of 2023. “We found, for example, a mother who was told in October 2023 that their son ‘ran away to buy vodka and subsequently stayed with women with low social responsibility,’” Bulavina says. “The guy’s mother says that he wanted to serve, he signed the contract himself, and that he wouldn’t have done that.”
Testimony about what happened in the unit with Ilya Bakharev could be given by 36 colleagues who were in Grechishkino during the hours of the murder. However, all of them, according to the investigator, were “sent to zero,” that is, to the zone of active fighting – probably so that the investigation would not be able to question them.
Soon after the murder, unit 11740 itself was disbanded. However, Sazhin, Semenikhin, and Barilenko, whom Bulavin also suspects of involvement in the murder, continued to serve.
Sazhin, despite the criminal case, is not hiding – at least from Bakharev’s relatives. He informed Ilya’s former colleagues at Redoubt that he was continuing his service in Khabarovsk and was again preparing “to be sent to the Northern Military District zone.” Bulavina also managed to reach him: in this conversation, Sazhin stated that “if those who killed had the opportunity to repeat everything, they would repeat it.” In further correspondence, he refused to talk about specifics: “I’ll see you in the next world and I’ll tell you everything.”
After the murder, Semenikhin went to serve in the “Storm Z” units, a special volunteer assault unit in which fighters are recruited, including from prisons. As Bulavina found out, his group “could have been unraveled in the Avdeevsky direction.”
* * *
On February 23, 2024, I met Svetlana at the military cemetery in Novosibirsk. She sent “Bereg” a video shot that day: a helium balloon in camouflage coloring was tied to the cross on Bakharev’s grave, and a Russian tricolor was stuck in the snow. When the camera turns, it is clear that there are many similar graves around, decorated with flags. “Happy holiday, dear ones,” Ilya’s mother says off-screen. – Love you”.
Instead of a wooden cross, Bulavin wants to erect a granite monument on Ilya’s grave. She is going to find the money for this herself: representatives of the Ministry of Defense, Svetlana says, told Bakharev’s family that they were not entitled to payments for the deceased: “Because Ilya did not die in battle – that is, he was not killed by crests.”
The Main Military Investigation Department and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation did not respond to Bereg’s requests. Dmitry Semenikhin, Nikolay Sazhin and Konstantin Barilenko did not respond to calls, SMS and messages in messengers and social networks.
(C)UNIAN 2024