He testified against many members of the Orekhovo grouping.
Becoming the most famous liquidator of the wild 90s was destined for colleague Chipita in the bloody trade — Alexander Pustovalov (Sasha Soldat). 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 grouping.
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 — his father was there 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 vocational school and began working at the State Scientific and Production Center for Space Activities 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 Guards 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) in the fall of that year. It was during this time that he fatefully met participants of the future Orekhovo-Medvedkovo organized crime group (OCG) — the most formidable grouping 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 large fight.
After his discharge, Pustovalov returned home with the rank of sergeant, took up an offer from the Orekhovo group, 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 performed became 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-Jamo (Alek Zver) and Nikolai Lazarev and Gennady Utkin. They signed their own death warrant by taking a luxury car from a businessman under Orekhovo's control.
The trio of criminal authorities was eliminated by Sasha Soldat with a series of accurate shots on the open terrace of the popular capital restaurant "Aragvi," where they were relaxing. Panic broke out 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 Orekhovo Koptsevskaya OCG by the name of Kutepev, who had done something to offend his accomplices. The liquidator made lethal 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 by the name of Goryushkin to the next world, who had become addicted to prohibited substances: the killer strangled him in the woods near the village of Gryaz (Odintsovo District of the Moscow Region). Instead of a control 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 by the name of Meshchenko: Sasha Soldat strangled him in his own apartment, dismembered the body, and transported the parts to the Odintsovo District.
One of the Orekhovo members told his cellmate Sergey Mavrodi — the creator of MMM, the most famous financial pyramid of the 1990s — that dismembering bodies had become a routine task for Pustovalov over time.
Pustovalov became the main executioner of the Orekhovo group
In October 1996, Pustovalov riddled criminal authority Alexander Kaligin from the Kuntsevskaya OCG along with two associates — they made a fatal mistake by entering into a conflict with one of the members of the Orekhovo grouping.
Next, the killer took the life of a newcomer to the Orekhovo group nicknamed Gavrila — he was suspected of betrayal. The liquidator lured the target to a forest strip near the Odintsovo sanatorium "Lipki" and strangled him there.
In the following year, 1997, the hour of reckoning came for a capital businessman by the name of Kulyabkov: he borrowed money from Butorin to arrange fake passports but was slow to complete the work. For this, Kulyabkov 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 offending Orekhovo members — Vinogradov and Grishkov. After a shootout with competitors, during which innocent people were injured, both bandits went underground.
They had chances to survive, but Vinogradov and Grishkov, while hiding, began using drugs, which their bosses strictly prohibited.
When rumors spread that the bandits planned to leave the ranks of the Orekhovo group, the fate of both was sealed: Sasha Soldat went to their hideout near Lake Krugloye near Sолнечногорск. He strangled both, and "disassembled" the bodies like a constructor.
A few days later, in the same house, Pustovalov sent a prominent member of the Orekhovo grouping, Ruslan Kurbanov, to the next world, who had planned to eliminate boss Butorin and take his place. By Osya'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 Orekhovo group — 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 grouping. Then the OCG leader decided to take preemptive action. He sent a group of liquidators led by Pustovalov to Greece. They strangled Solonik and Kotova, and dismembered the latter's body, scattering the parts around the area. Who knows how many more lives Pustovalov would have taken if not for the law enforcement agencies that began hunting for him in January 1998. At that time, a stash of the killer's weapons was found at the dacha of his common-law 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 was going 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 anything. "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 Orekhovo grouping, 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 release for 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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