He testified against many members of the Orekhov group.
It was destined for Alexander Pustovalov (Sasha Soldat), a colleague of Chipita in the bloody trade, to become the most famous liquidator of the tumultuous 90s. He served in the marine corps, and great prospects opened up for him in the military, but he chose a different path, eliminating 24 people on the orders of the bosses of the Orekhovo group.
The future killer served in the marine corps
Alexander Pustovalov was born on September 25, 1973, in Moscow, but spent his early years in Iraq, where his father was on a business trip. The family returned to the capital when the boy was seven years old. In addition to studying at school, Alexander attended a judo section and a music school for piano — for spiritual development.
After finishing eight grades, Pustovalov learned the profession of a locksmith at a technical school and began working at the State Space Scientific Production Center named after Khrunichev (GKNPC). However, he did not stay there long: when the young man turned 18, he was drafted into the army. He served in the guard brigade of the marine corps.
In the summer of 1992, Pustovalov participated in combat operations in Transnistria and was concussed there — a shell hit his armored personnel carrier. Despite this, Alexander completed his combat mission, for which he was rewarded with ten days of leave (not counting travel) that autumn. It was during this time that he fatefully met participants of the future Orekhovo-Medvedkovo organized crime group (OCG) — the most formidable gang in Moscow in the 1990s. It all started one evening when Pustovalov, resting in one of the bars in the west of the capital, got involved in a major fight.
After his discharge, Pustovalov returned home with the rank of sergeant, took up an offer from the Orekhovites, and became the personal bodyguard of one of the group's leaders, Sergey Butorin (Osy), with a salary of $300 a month. However, by 1997, his "salary" had reached five thousand dollars, but the tasks he began to perform were quite different.
Sasha Soldat made executions his craft
For his first assignment as a killer, Pustovalov, nicknamed Sasha Soldat, went out in the summer of 1995. He was tasked with eliminating the leaders of the Assyrian OCG, Avdysh Bid-Zhamo (Alek Zver) and Nikolai Lazarev and Gennady Utkin. They signed their own death warrants by taking a luxury car from a businessman under Orekhov's control.
The trio of criminal authorities was eliminated by Sasha Soldat with a series of precise shots on the open terrace of the popular capital restaurant "Aragvi," where they were relaxing. Panic ensued among the restaurant guests, allowing the killer to easily escape, discarding his weapon in a pit next to the building of the Prosecutor General's Office on Bolshaya Dmitrovka.
Pustovalov's next target in early 1996 was a member of the friendly Orekhov Koptsevskaya OCG named Kutepev, who had somehow wronged his accomplices. The liquidator made fatal shots to Kutepev's head and back on Malaya Cherkizovskaya Street in mid-February.
Sasha Soldat also acted as an executioner for members of his own group: in July 1997, he sent a bandit named Goryushkin, who had developed a drug addiction, to the next world: the killer strangled him in a forest near the village of Gryaz (Odintsovo District of the Moscow Region). Instead of a finishing shot, Pustovalov slashed the bandit’s throat with a knife, after which Goryushkin was buried by his former comrades. The same fate befell another member of the Orekhovo-Medvedkovo OCG named Meshchenko: Sasha Soldat strangled him in his own apartment, dismembered the body, and transported the parts to the Odintsovo District.
One of the Orekhovites recounted to his cellmate Sergey Mavrodi — the creator of MMM, the most famous financial pyramid of the 1990s — that the dismemberment of bodies had eventually become routine for Pustovalov.
Pustovalov became the main executioner of the Orekhovites
In October 1996, Pustovalov riddled the criminal authority from the Kuntsevskaya OCG, Alexander Kaligin, along with two associates — they made a fatal mistake by entering into a conflict with one of the members of the Orekhov group.
Next, the killer took the life of a newcomer to the Orekhovites nicknamed Gavrila — he was suspected of treason. The liquidator lured the target into a forest strip near the Odintsovo sanatorium "Lipki" and there strangled him.
In the following year, 1997, the hour of reckoning came for a Moscow businessman named Kylbyakov: he borrowed money from Butorin to arrange fake passports but was slow to complete the job. For this, Kylbyakov received ten bullets from Pustovalov at the exit of the "Santa Fe" restaurant — he had no chance of survival.
In early 1998, the killer again acted as an executioner for the Orekhovites who had erred — Vinogradov and Grishkov. After a shootout with competitors, during which innocent people were injured, both bandits went into hiding.
They had chances to survive, but Vinogradov and Grishkov, while in hiding, began using drugs, which their bosses strictly prohibited.
When rumors spread that the bandits were planning to leave the ranks of the Orekhovites, the fate of both was sealed: Sasha Soldat went to their hideout near Lake Krugloye near Sолнечногорск. He strangled both of them and "disassembled the bodies like a constructor."
A few days later, in the same house, Pustovalov sent a prominent member of the Orekhov group, Ruslan Kurbanov, to the next world, who had plotted to eliminate boss Butorin and take his place. By Osy's order, the killer ended Kurbanov's life with several precise shots.
"After that, I carried him (Kurbanov) downstairs, dismembered him. I burned the head and arms in the fireplace. No one helped me with the dismemberment. Because, let's say, only I had the nerves for that."
The most notorious crime of Sasha Soldat was the execution of another legendary killer of the Orekhovites — Alexander Solonik (Sasha Makedonsky). Shortly after escaping from the capital's pre-trial detention center "Matrosskaya Tishina," Solonik moved to Greece. He settled there with his beloved — the finalist of the "Miss Russia-96" beauty contest, Svetlana Kotova.
Soon after, Butorin learned that Solonik had decided to eliminate him along with other leaders of the group. Then the OCG leader decided to strike first. He sent a group of liquidators headed by Pustovalov to Greece. They strangled Solonik and Kotova, and the latter's body was dismembered and scattered around the area. Who knows how many more lives Pustovalov would have taken if it weren't for law enforcement agencies that began hunting him from January 1998. At that time, a cache of the killer's weapons was found at the dacha of his civil wife, Yulia. Yulia did not betray her beloved despite the threats from the operatives and received a real sentence.
Pustovalov was detained in 1999 when he went to congratulate his mother on her birthday. Knowing about this date, MUR operatives set up an ambush on the approach to her house. After his arrest, the killer did not deny his actions. "I am a soldier, this is my job," Pustovalov replied when asked why he took people's lives.
He testified against many members of the Orekhov group, including its leaders Sergey Butorin and Dmitry Belkin (Belok), and his "colleagues" — liquidators Igor Sosnovsky (Chipit) and Sergey Frolov (Bolton).
Cooperation with the investigation allowed him to avoid a life sentence
In May 2004, he was found guilty of 19 executions and sentenced to 22 years in prison. A year later, Pustovalov was charged with the execution of Solonik and Kotova, and his sentence was increased by 12 months.
In December 2016, investigators were able to prove that Sasha Soldat was involved in four more executions. By a new court decision, the killer was to spend 24 years behind bars, one for each life taken.
Alexander Pustovalov was released in November 2023. The exact date of the release of the 50-year-old prisoner was kept secret to avoid media attention. While in prison, Sasha Soldat got married and became a father. Those who know him say that the most famous killer of the 1990s intends to dedicate the rest of his life to raising his son.
Today he avoids outside attention and leads a secluded life with his family.
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