In Moscow's Shadows

In Moscow's Shadows 230: The Rise and Fall of a Chechen Gang

• Mark Galeotti • Episode 230

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Before the self-indulgence of a deep-dive into the rise and fall of the Chechen Lazanskaya Brigada in Moscow -- and why there are some worrying implications for the coming situation in Russia and Europe -- I look at recent developments: the appointment of Budanov as Zelensky's new chief of staff, the US operation in Venezuela, and recent drone strikes...

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It's a new year. Well, stuff does continue to happen. So let's take a look at some recent developments before into some criminal history. 

Hello, I'm Mark Galeotti, and welcome to my view of Russia In Moscow Shadows. This podcast, of varying length, frequency and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise Software Company Conducttr. 

Well, happy new year, one and all, and let's hope 2026 proves a little bit less, well, bloody and insane are the first two words that spring to mind. And obviously for my paying patrons, I hope you enjoyed your 12 days of shadowy Christmas. This was a series of bonuses that paying patrons get, and there were a couple of little mini podcasts that I'll probably be putting out on general release a month later. 

Anyway, let's talk about things that have been happening. First of all, in Ukraine, yes, the talks process, who knows quite where we are with that, but the big news is that Andrii Yermak, the former chief of staff, his position (he had to step down, if you remember, amidst a rather embarrassing corruption row) has now been filled by head of military intelligence Kirillo Budanov. Now, look, usual caveats, I'm not a Ukraine specialist. A few thoughts.

Budanov, he is pretty hawkish, but nonetheless, he is what one could call Washington, DC proximate. You know, although there was a sense that Yermak was more associated with the UK, I'm not quite sure if I accept that. I think that really speaks to this notion that somehow it's the Brits who are pushing for war while America is pushing for peace; it's a little bit more complex than that. But main thing is he is absolutely quite realistic, and indeed he, despite having in the past made some rather ridiculously bullish statements about retaking Crimea and the like, of late he's been sounding a lot more sober and realistic about the dangers of Ukraine in the war continuing. Does this mean something for the negotiations? Well, look, I can only assume that he wouldn't accept this position if he felt that Kyiv was either on the verge of some humiliating capitulation, or conversely dooming itself to a forever war. So presumably he thinks that there's some hopes of some kind of reasonable outcome. I mean, we'll just have to wait and see. And also we'll have to wait and see how the Western press corps deal with him. In his position as head of HUR, military intelligence, to be perfectly honest, there was a whole genre of quite embarrassingly fawning Western coverage of him. They couldn't get enough of him and his secret base and his little canary, and I won't go into detail. You can easily Google it if you want. We'll see if they actually start treating him as, shall I say, a political figure now, rather than an icon of resistance. And for some, there's already some claims within the commentariat about how it's bad news to have a securocrat, to have someone from the intelligence community given a political role. I'm personally not of the same opinion. Actually, a good security official (and this is one of the problems if one looks at the people at the top of the Russian security apparatus, I wouldn't regard them as good in this respect), but nonetheless, ultimately the purpose of intelligence is not just simply to kill people and blow things up, as happens in war, but it is also to provide what's known as the best truth to the political leadership. And I think Budanov, therefore, will have a much better idea of the situation militarily. He's going to have to climb quite a steep learning curve on the political and administrative side of things. But nonetheless, I think actually a smart security officer is often going to be that much more capable of navigating the realities rather than just simply thinking about the optics, which is what politicians quite frankly tend to focus on. But we'll just have to wait and see. 

Anyway, the other big news is, of course, Venezuela. Let me be honest. I think from Moscow's point of view, some people are saying, oh, this is a terrible humiliation for Moscow because their client has been taken away and is going to be put on trial in New York. And others are saying, oh, this is great for Moscow because it essentially creates some kind of moral equivalence between the superpowers and essentially provides an implicit justification that a great power just does what it wants. Well, look, I mean, obviously Moscow wasn't going to do anything to protect Maduro because it couldn't do anything, particularly because it looks like there was some kind of stitch up of a deal. It's not like the Venezuelans were all busy fighting to protect Maduro. And look, Maduro was never a client like, for example, Assad in Syria, , with whom Moscow does have an implicit guarantee that if all else fails, we will try and get you out and there'll be a luxurious flat or residence outside Moscow waiting for you. You know, Assad, Yanukovych, etc. So I think from their point of view they didn't really owe him all that much. And in from that context, yeah, exactly, it's no real big deal. 

To be honest, Putin has been pulling back from what one could think of as the sort of the wider Russian imperial pretension since 2022, when he's had to focus on Ukraine. And look, if he's willing to basically see the South Caucasus fall from Russia's sphere of influence, he's not going to care that much about Venezuela. And the fact that he's adopted such a transactional and compartmentalized approach to policy towards the United States, you know, whereas under Biden it was it was basically everything, it was all in one bucket, shall we say. Now, actually, with the Trump administration, nuclear policy and Ukraine and potential business deals and proliferation, all of these are treated separately. So in some ways, they can provide their pretty mild critique of what's happened in in Venezuela without in any way having that affect, for example, the whole issue of Ukraine. 

Obviously, though, the fact that this is whatever may be said, you know, a breach of international law, that is no bad thing for the wider Russian narrative. After all, you know, Putin's view is essentially that this is what great powers do, and great powers have spheres of influence. And, if we are going to let America have its Latin American sphere of influence, then the corollary is we should be allowed our Slavic one. Alexei Naumov, who's an expert of the Russian International Affairs Council, RIAC, said in Kommersant “Russia has its own sphere of influence, and no matter how sympathetic we may be to the Bolivarian Republic, Venezuela, it was clear that engaging in an overly active struggle to preserve it today was not only futile, but also frankly unnecessary, given the limitations of its capabilities and the priority of foreign policy objectives.” So, you know, there we have a fairly sober analysis that says, look, this doesn't really matter to us too much. So even though we couldn't do anything, even if we could have, we shouldn't. 

Of course, one also gets the rather more over egged and distinctly overrich expressions of moral outrage. I mean in I think it was Moscovsky Komsomolets we had this. “The Maduro story isn't about Venezuela. It's not even about oil. Maduro may not be respected, accepted, or considered legitimate, but the president of another country is not a trophy. This story is not about Venezuela, but about a world where only force decides. The problem isn't a specific name. The problem is precedent. The moment when might replaces right, and confidence in one's own invulnerability replaces common sense. A world where precedence can be captured and taken wherever one pleases is no longer a world of rules. It's a world where anyone can be taken tomorrow, including Trump himself if they can get their hands on him.” Now, this is not because there's some kind of fear in the Kremlin that Putin can be next or anything like that. But it is quite astonishing the hypocrisy that is being laid bare there, given that this is could be just as easily a description of what they tried to do in Ukraine in February 2022. 

But again, the hypocrisy is in some ways the virtue from Moscow's point of view. They like a world in which they can, with some degree of justification, claim that look, it doesn't matter what people say, whether they say they're for international law or whatever else, everyone is basically a self-interested hypocrite. So don't treat us as anything different. 

Does it mean that the United States is going to be distracted? I mean, certainly one can wonder how the claim that it can is going to run Venezuela can possibly be operationalized. But on the other hand, look, a superpower can indeed walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't think this is going to have any particular impact on what happens with Ukraine. The only real question is what this means for the further risk of transatlantic divides. You know, the French have been calling this a violation of international law. Kaja Kallas provided a rather mealy-mouthed call for restraint. Keir Starmer, the lawyer, that seems to be about the only really distinguishing factor of the British Prime Minister, but  nonetheless, he can't bring himself to criticize any kind of breach of international law. So we'll just have to wait and see if this has any real impact for EU-US relations. Ultimately, again, I don't think so. 

Moving on, a couple of drone attacks to talk about briefly. So we had the Russian claim that the Ukrainians launched 91 drones at Putin's residence at Valdai in Novgorod region, which always looked pretty iffy. Now, look, some people are saying that there's no evidence of any kind of attack at all, despite some so far, frankly, unverified Russian presentation of some videos, and apparently they have given the Americans the targeting data from a shot down drone. But again, can one actually trust that? I think the answer would be no. However, we've now had, coming from US sources reported in the Wall Street Journal, not just the CIA saying yes, this was not an attack on Putin's residents, but saying at the same time there was an attack aimed against another military facility in Novgorod region. And this does raise the possibility, and it's a rather worrying one, that the Russians genuinely believe that this was an attack on Putin's residents. After all, you don't really know for sure what the drone's target is going to be. And therefore, the more that the West say, no, no, no, it wasn't that, the more that Russia thinks this is just the West covering for Ukraine. And given that we know that this is a proxy war, that must mean that the West either supported or at least okayed, if not indeed, actually initiated an attack on Putin's residents. So there is the scope for this actually to become still quite a significant issue, and one which is in some ways with both sides having a degree of right on their side. The Ukrainians not having targeted Putin's residents, the Russians actually genuinely believing that they did. 

Then we have a second drone attack which has been much, much less uh widely covered in the Western press, which was at Khorly, that on New Year's Eve three drones hit a bar and hotel in Khorly on the Black Sea coast in occupied Kherson. And so far the tally is 27 dead, more seriously wounded. Now, the Russians say that these were all civilians. Again, unfortunately, we can't at the moment verify that. But the fact that three drones hit this target suggests this was not an accident, but was indeed targeted. Now, at first Kyiv just didn't respond at all when it was being asked about this. Then they said, ah no, actually this was a military target, that the bar was full of uh military and political officers. I don't know. Maybe it couldn't be the case. Could also be that they made a mistake, there was a mistargeting, that they may aim to hit somewhere else, or that they thought it was going to be full of army officers and it wasn't, or whatever. Again, very difficult in the current sort of fog of war to really know. 

But it is worth noting that this is still a very big issue for Russians. And indeed, the very fact that the West has given this little attention is indeed being noted. Again, something we must remember, the Russians are much more, frankly, I'd say, obsessive about what the West is saying about Russia and the war than we are the other way around. And therefore, actually, our responses do have an impact on the Russians. So, again, we'll have to wait and see, but this is another area in which actually I think you know the Russians are feeling angry. And you one might say, well, so what? You know, they're just experiencing what the Ukrainians have gone through day after day, which is entirely true. But the point is we can't discount the political impact potentially of sentiment. We'll have to wait and see quite how that story develops. 

So at the moment, yeah, lots of stuff happening. Who says this is going to be the quiet season? But nonetheless, in many ways the actual impacts remain to be seen. Will Budanov's entry into the office of the President of Ukraine help or hinder the peace talks? Could do either. Will Venezuela actually have any real impact on what's going on? I suspect not, though it will be a talking point for the Russians in the global south in particular. Will these drone attacks actually have any serious impact? In and of themselves? No. But the one point I would make about them is precisely that we do see a degree of nationalist outrage that obviously the Kremlin seeks to harness. This is why we have to fight this war with the awful Ukrainians, because they are awful people, and we need to do awful things to them as a result. Fair enough. However, as they go on, firstly, they do contribute to a sense that the Kremlin is unable, frankly, to master the Ukrainians. And secondly, it does feed into a, I should stress, small minority, but nonetheless, a vocal small minority of ultranationalists who are developing their critique of Putin. That they are saying Putin's problem is that he's actually being too restrained in his conflict. And they will try and mobilize that, especially if there is a peace. They will try and mobilize that to create a kind of stab in the back myth that says, in fact, we could have got much more, much more quickly, if only Putin hadn't been so half-hearted. It may seem bizarre and surreal to suggest that Putin is being criticized for not being aggressive enough in Ukraine, but certainly it is there. An instance like this will get used by these nationalists. You know, maybe these are stories which are going to be gone from the public consciousness within a month. But if they're not, then that poses a potential, I think, risk for Putin. 

Anyway, enough about current affairs. Let's have a break, and then let's talk about some criminal history. Specifically, the rise and fall of the Lazanska Brigada, one of the most notorious Chechen organized crime groups in Moscow. And then at the end, some reason as to why that actually still matters today. 

Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, civil affairs and the like. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com/InMoscowShadows. And remember that patrons get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian. And you can also follow me on Twitter at Mark Galeotti or on Facebook, Mark Galeotti on Russia. Now back to the episode. 

So the Lazanskaya Brigada. Now the roots of this organized crime group actually go back to two Chechen students studying in late 70s Moscow. Well, I say studying, not very much studying actually. Anyway, they were Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, known as Khozha, who had been well, he was born in 1954 in Kyrgyzstan. So he was the son of a family of Chechens who had been deported en masse in the very brutal Operation Lentil by Stalin. And he enrolled in the law faculty at Moscow State University. But he was soon expelled for a variety of reasons, including the fact that he didn't really study. He really had just wanted to get to Moscow. 

And then we had Movlady Atlangeriev, known as Ruslan, born the same year, in this time in Kazakhstan. Remember, the entire Chechen population, after all, had been resettled. So went to study at the Plekhanov Moscow Institute of National Economy instead. He dropped out, actually, and he and Nukhaev got together, they sort of ran in the same circles, they had similar quite elevated tastes. But of course, how could they possibly afford those elevated tastes? Particularly when they're surrounded by what if you are the sons of Chechens who were brutally deported in the midst of World War II, well late 70s Moscow, however tawdry it may look if you go and look at photos and pictures and video now of it, actually was indeed something of a promised land. But you needed money. So what they did is, they turned to crime. And in particular, what they started to do was targeting foreign students, international students, usually from Allied nations in Africa and the Middle East, many of whom themselves were involved in criminal activity. The point is they often didn't have much in the way of stipends, but because they, unlike Soviet citizens at the time, could relatively freely travel and could bring in goods that were defitsitny, that were exceedingly rare with it within the Soviet Union, so often they were involved in trading currency or speculating, in other words, buying and selling for profit in clothing, consumer goods, that kind of thing. So what they would do is often essentially burgle these people's apartments to try and get their stash and their money. And then increasingly they also turned to, in effect, mugging them or demanding protection money from them. Because the point is they knew that these victims could not report the robberies to the police because they themselves were involved in criminal activity. 

Still, the KGB obviously paid particular attention to all the various foreigners in Moscow, not least because it was always looking for opportunities to leverage various indiscretions to recruit agents, and so they very soon became aware of the activities of Khozha and Ruslan. Some people say that they were actually recruited. I'm not convinced that was the case. Rather, I think it's that they kind of clocked them as potential assets in the future. But the point is that they didn't get a chance to perform that role because they made a mistake, and one of their targets apparently was the son of an especially high-ranking African official from an extremely friendly country. I'm unsure which, it might have been Angola. Anyway, the KGB wasn't about to shield them, quite the opposite. It actually had to step in and demonstrate the efficiency and responsiveness of Soviet law enforcement. 

So the two guys were arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. And as so often, life in what was known as the zone, in other words, the prison camp system, really was an academy of crime. I mean, indeed, in the sort of thieves' slang, actually academia is used to mean a prison camp. Prison camp is an academy. And in particular, what they did is they aligned themselves in many ways with the traditional blatnoi traditions of the thieves within the code, the old sort of traditionalist approach. So they very much kind of defied the prison administration, they broke the rules, they engaged in brawls, and that got them quite a bit of punishment from the authorities, but on the other hand, it earned them a degree of respect within the criminal underworld. 

They were released from prison as seasoned gangsters in 1988. They fit perfectly into the new era in Moscow. Remember, 1988. This was at a time when Gorbachev's quixotic attempts at reforming the system was actually destroying it. And we saw increasing hardships, increasing shortages. We saw growing social unrest, indeed growing nationalist pressures. It's the very end of the war in Afghanistan. The veterans themselves are forming a sort of disgruntled and disruptive subculture. And we also see the move towards the first beginnings of legalized private commercial activity through the form of the cooperative movement. And the cooperative movement was going to be a bonanza for organized crime in that it was private sector kind of, and it was also resented by much of the Soviet community and indeed the police, because it had to charge higher prices. The idea was higher prices but higher quality, and many of these were very much victims of protection racketeering, or they were used to launder the funds from various criminal activities. 

But anyway, in this increasingly chaotic and freewheeling period in which it's worth noting corruption skyrocketed, which creates all kinds of protection for the criminals. Well, this was exactly going to be a bonanza not just for organized crime generally, but for Khozha and Ruslan. So they started creating their own gang, particularly recruiting from fellow Chechens. Because this was a time when turf lines in Moscow were only just being drawn up. Remember, up to this point there had been organized crime within the Soviet system, but it had to remain pretty much invisible behind the scenes. In some ways, it acted as the middleman between corrupt party bosses who had power and black marketeers who had access to goods and services that the party bosses wanted. Organized crime often sat in the middle. It provided protection to the black marketeers, and it arranged for the corrupt party bosses to get the foreign goods, the whiskey, the clothes, the whatever else they wanted from the black marketeers. Now it was beginning to emerge from the shadows, though. It didn't have to fear the state so much, and so as I said, you have a whole variety of different gangs beginning to divide Moscow up into different spheres of influence. And several of these were Chechens. There were crime bosses like Musa Talarov, who was known as the old man, Lecha ‘Beard’ Islamov, I mean, most Chechens have beards, but presumably I hadn't actually seen a photo of him. Maybe he had a particularly impressive one. Then there was Lecha Altamirov, who's known as Lecha the Bald, and others. I don't want to turn this just into a shopping list of miscellaneous Chechens. 

Anyway, so Nukhaev and Atlangeryev formed their own gang. And many of the Chechens whom they recruit bring with them, shall we say, a dowry of existing criminal businesses or indeed contacts. I mean, one of them, for example, was Maxim Lazovsky, who was known as Khamoy, the Lame. Now, he was a former traffic police officer from Grozny, but since he'd moved to Moscow, had again built all kinds of relationships within the local police. So, you know, that was his that was that was what he brought to the gang. So generally we actually have a group that quite quickly coheres into, by 1989, probably around 40 or so members. And at this point, they don't really have a name. I mean, they are Khorzha’s and Ruslan's gang, but that's not really much of a name. But they had taken over the Lazania Restaurant, which is again one of these sort of co-op restaurants, and it became their base on Pyatnitskaya Street. So nice and central. Anyway, so because that was their base, that was the place where they were known to hang out. And indeed, one of their members, Mustava Shidayev, actually bought an apartment right next to it. Anyway, for that reason, that's why they became known as the Lazanskaya Brigada or the Lazanskaya Organized Criminal Group. 

And the Lazanskis, I mean, they were involved in a wide range of criminal activities, fairly typical ones of the time. As I say, a lot of protection racketeering, cafes, restaurants, clubs, casinos. Also, though, they particularly specialized in Beriozka shops. Now, Beriozka, that was a Soviet initiative to try and, well largely to try and milk tourists of hard currency. I mean, I remember you could buy things in Beriozka stores you could not buy anywhere else, ranging from, you know, particularly nice souvenirs all the way through to foreign food or very rare, hard to find things like caviar and the like. But the point is, these were shops for foreigners which only accepted hard currency. Now, some Soviet citizens also were able to shop in Beriozka's because they were given these special vouchers, but they were very much for nomenklatura insiders. Mainly, though, I said this was a desperate way of trying to suck whatever hard currency they could from the wallets of foreign tourists. And you know, to be honest, you did have to end up shopping at Beriozkas. I mean, I remember not so much Beriozkas, but also other sort of hard currency shops that opened up. I mean, when I was there doing my PhD, which was from 88 to 1991, yes, you tried to shop in Soviet stores, but by that point, particularly food, it was very difficult to get stuff at all, let alone of any quality. And so I accidentally had to go to the hard currency supermarket in the basement of the Mezhdunarodnaya, the International Hotel, just simply because after a certain point you think, no, I've had enough. I want to have something nicer. Anyway, so this was a particular target, and why that was important was actually, again, through that they were able to access hard currency. Non-roubles, which was very, very important. 

What else were they involved in? Thefts of luxury cars. We're just beginning to see foreign cars beginning to make it into Moscow streets at this point, and they obviously they became quite a target. But actually, ironically enough, they were just too visible. So instead they focused on things like Chaika limousines and Volga sedans of the best qualities. They were involved in contract killings, but also actually the kidnapping and the extortion of black market entrepreneurs who were still, many of them not yet fully legitimized. They were still involved in the sort of business you couldn't go to the police if you were targeted with. And increasingly, rather than just simply burgling someone's flat and seeing what they could find, what they would do is they would kidnap these people, they would drive them out to some hut out in the woods outside Moscow, beat and torture, and often very, very brutally hurt these individuals until they were told where their stashes of cash were. Because at this point, again, you couldn't take it to the banks. So a lot of these people had, usually not in their apartments somewhere else, but again, literally huge stocks, sacks and sacks of rubles. So that's what they were after. 

So these were bad guys. And well, to be honest, quite how bad soon became pretty obvious. The Chechens from the first had a particular reputation as being especially quick to turn to violence and implacable when they did. They would be willing to take risks, they would be willing to be, shall we say, counterproductively violent if need be. This was visible, for example, in 1988. They had a dispute with the Russian Slavic Baumanskaya gang from the Bauman region of Moscow. And what happened was they were known, the Baumanskaya gang was known to again have their hangout being the Labyrinth restaurant on Kalininsky Prospect. So at one point, 30 members of the Lazanskaya storm the restaurant, carrying knives. Guns not yet really that widely used or available. Anyway, carrying knives, attack the 15 fairly senior figures of Baumanskaya and other Russian Slavic gangs who were present, you know, stab a whole bunch. And the key thing is that both the leaders, both Khozha and Ruslan, were present. Again, it was very much a mark of faith that whereas a lot of the Slavic gangs, once you became a leader, you tried not to get involved in the real rough stuff. Not because you were a coward, but because you were more likely then to get arrested. But no, here, in keeping with the sort of macho North Caucasus traditions, Nukhaev and Atlangeryev were absolutely present and in the thick of things. And after this point, well not only did the Baumanskaya gang decide to not actually sort of clash with Lazanskaya, but generally you saw a lot of other gangs thinking, well, maybe we should be thinking twice as well if we had turf conflicts with them. 

Now, at this point, actually the KGB, which after all, although we think of it very much as an espionage on internal security force, also was responsible for dealing with serious organized crime. Well, they decided to that they really started to try and get involved. But it was very difficult because again, this is a time of the fragmentation of power. But they did indeed arrest both Nukhaev and later on Atlangeryev. But it didn't necessarily work as planned. I mean, Nukhayev, he was sentenced to eight years on racketeering charges. Those are the ones that they could make stick. And he was sent to a prison camp in Khabarovsk region. And he was there for what about a year and a half before in November 1991. So in other words, very much just before the actual formal collapse of the Soviet Union. A collection of police officers from Grozny, Chechnya, arrive at the camp, and they have papers, genuine papers, according to which a case has been opened against Nukhaev by the Chechen courts, and therefore he had to be transferred to Grozny for interrogation. Well, okay, he's released, he's taken back to Grozny, and once he gets there, lo and behold, a mistrial is declared, and the Chechen Supreme Court annuls the guilty verdict that had been placed on him. So Nukhayev was not just free, he was actually technically legally free. 

It was interesting actually how the Soviet state and later on the Russian Federation in some ways would find themselves very much the victims of their own determination to treat Chechnya as if it was still just another loyal member of first the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation. Because what that did allow is for corrupt and self-serving, but also actually nationalist and secessionist forces in Grozny to essentially use the structures of the central state apparatus against itself. So in this case, technically speaking, the Soviet and then Russian authorities have to accept the judgment of the Supreme Court, just as the Chechen State Bank was used to defraud the central state bank of billions of rubles by just simply issuing false avisos, which are proof of fund documents, that say, yes, this amount of money is sitting in this particular account, so you can pay that out. So they would issue these avisos, claiming that Chechen so-and-so has got, whatever it is, ten million rubles in the bank. He can then take that along to the central bank in Moscow, say, I'd like to withdraw my ten million rubles, please. You see, here is proof that I have it. 10 million rubles will be dispersed. Central bank then turns to Grozny and says, Okay, well, in order to balance the books, we have to now accept that ten million rubles from you, at which point Grozny says, What? Hey? No, nothing to do with us, mate. We don't know what you're talking about. Time and time again this was done, and there was nothing Moscow could do so long as it was pretending that this was a single unitary apparatus. 

Anyway, then the Soviet Union collapses, the 1990s. I mean, these were wild guys, and they had wild times now to enjoy themselves in. And particularly, I mean, this is again a feature of many of the Chechen gangs, but particularly when we're talking about the Lazanskaya, their degree of violence was really quite noteworthy. I mean, they would time and time again turn up to what were meant to be sit-downs, in other words, meetings to arrange and make an agreement between criminals, instead, arm to the teeth and not even try and negotiate, but just simply turn that into an ambush. As that demonstrated, although they've been happy to kind of play up to the blatnoi traditions while they were in the prison camp system, the two gangsters and their various henchmen had absolutely no respect for the sort of criminal code and the understandings that were in were within it about how you resolved disputes, how you had to show respect for the established Vory v Zakone thieves within the code who are the sort of traditional hierarchs. And indeed, in one particular instance, several of these Vory v Zakone, led by the man who'd actually then become arguably the most important of all of them, Zachary Kalashov, who's known as Shakro Molodoy, Shakro the Younger. Anyway, they attempted to precisely open some kind of negotiations with the Lazanskya crime bosses, and indeed some other Chechens, and instead what happened? Well, Nukhaev led an attack on them again with knives. Shakro himself was stabbed. Now, under other circumstances, that would lead to an immediate sort of mob war, but again, at this particular time, no one really wanted to provoke the Chechens. There is this macho culture that they have, and that sense that frankly they will destroy the whole system rather than be defeated. They would not be reasonable. That was an interesting phrase I once had heard, you know, sort of told to me when I was talking to a police officer who had dealt with the Chechens and said this was the thing about the Chechens, they were not reasonable in a way that other gangsters would be, because other gangsters would be thinking about consequences. They didn't care who they took on. I mean, take the Liubertsy, the gang that was based in this rather gritty, grimy, proletarian suburb of Moscow, which incidentally had sent a lot of its sons to Afghanistan and therefore had a particularly large proportion of Afghan war veterans in the gang, as well as bodybuilders and the like. Well, you know, even they frankly suffered the loss of a whole bunch of their leaders when they got into a conflict with Lazansky. Not through, shall we say sounds silly to say a fair fight, but you know, not through the usual ways, but because of ambushes and dry gulching, unexpected moments. The trouble is though, in the short term, fine, that gets you power and if not respect, the kind of well, the kind of respect that a rabid, salivating dog might get. But what this actually makes is that you become a threat to the collective status quo. 

So the big Slavic Russian gangs, particularly Orekhovskaya, Solntsevo, Baumanskaya, Lyuberetskaya, Balashikinskaya, they all began to think that the Chechens in general and the Lazanskis in particular were gonna be a problem. And so they actually began to essentially coordinate. Ironically, this encouraged horizontal ties on both sides. So the Slavic gangs began to To coordinate, and so too, the Lazanskis start to find common cause not just with other Chechen gangs, but also other gangs from the North and South Caucasus. You had an alliance with a gang led by a particularly infamous criminal called Nikolai Suleimanov, and others like there was a Georgian, Gennady Lobzhanitze, who was known as Gena Shram, Gena the Scarred, uh Tengiz the Old, whose name was ooh, I'm trying, my mind's gone blank for a moment. Tengis Marianoshvili, that's it. Now, this mattered because these figures tended to be themselves Vory v Zakone, so they had a certain degree of authority. But in particular, they could act as a bridge to other non-Slav gangs and non-Slav traditions, shall we say, at a time when the whole Vorovskoi Mir, the thieves world, the sort of sense of a common cultural or subcultural community of crime was really breaking down. So there was the risk of what we could think of almost as an ethnic civil war within the Russian underworld in the 1990s, between the Russian Slav gangs and all the various others, the not just Chechens, but Dagestanis and Lezhgins and Georgians and maybe even Armenians and the like. Now this was something that absolutely began to worry the authorities. 

But at the same time, a further complicating factor, as if we need further complications, is that the Chechens and particularly the Lazanski group seemed to have established some kind of ties to the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was known as the sort of grey cardinal at the time, had a big media empire as well as an industrial empire, very close to the Yeltsin team and so forth. Certainly his Avtovaz car business seemed mysteriously immune from protection racketeering after he made Magomet Ismailov, who was one of the Lazansky's senior members, a key figure within the Avtovaz security department. So, you know, true or not, whether this was an alliance or what, nonetheless, just simply the rumour that the Chechens were in bed with Berezovsky also, on the one hand, made them all the more formidable, but on the other hand, made this whole issue that much more political. 

Ultimately, the Chechen's big problem, after all, was just simply that they were vastly outnumbered by the Slavic Russian criminals, but also that their reputation didn't just make them a common target of the criminals, they also began to make them a threat for the FSK, which was the predecessor of the FSB. The KGB, almost biblical, you know, and lo, the KGB begat the AFB, which begat the FSK, which in due course begat the FSB. Anyway, so the Federal Counterintelligence Service, the FSK, is now concerned. First of all, because frankly, the degree of violence and indiscriminate activity of the Chechens is beginning to become an embarrassment. It also is a threat to Slavic gangs that they were actually working with. And there was a particular concern about the link back to the Chechen Republic. I mean, this is the eve of the first Chechen War of 1994 to 1996, and there was a sense that essentially these criminals were going to back the rebels, or at least some within them were going to do so. Now, the real catalyst of the fall of the Lazanska group was when it picked a fight with the Orekhovskaya gang in Moscow, under the violent but also unfortunately depressingly able gang leader Sergei Timofeev, known as Sylvester. And he very much united Russian organized crime against them, particularly with the support of Yaponchik, who was a very senior Vor v Zakone, Vyacheslav Ivankov. And he was able to bring a lot of traditional authority within the remnants of the Vorovsky Mir to back Sylvester. And then you also had the FSK essentially happy to encourage this. They weren't going to be directly involved, but they were certainly going to turn a blind eye when the Russians carried out attacks and come down hard when the Chechens did. 

As they faced killings, arrests, and in particular cuts in their revenue streams, which matters because everyone's basically in it for the money, Lazanskaya began to fragment. And in this, the Chechen War, the start of the first Chechen War was absolutely crucial. Because you had Nukhayev, who was supporting Dudayev's regime, Dudayev being the leader of the sort of breakaway Chechen government. After all, I mean, although it had been well paid to do so, nonetheless, these are the guys who had freed him right the way back in 1991. On the other hand, you had Khosa Suleimanov, one of who's now probably the number three within the gang, who absolutely opposed it and was supportive of anti-Dudayev Chechen forces. Atlangireev tried to stay neutral, presented himself as a potential mediator, both within the gang, but also in the wider conflict, but it didn't really get anywhere. 

And the war spread from Chechnya to Moscow. Suleimanov, who I said had been fighting on the side of the Chechen anti-Dudaev opposition, was captured by militants. He was ransomed. However, once he got back to Moscow in 1994, he was gunned down by unknown assassins. Nukhaev had joined Dudaev's forces. He'd actually been made a brigadier general of Ichkeria. This is what they called themselves the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, and given the country's highest award, the Korvency, honour of the nation. Now, he would return to Moscow in due course, having essentially paid for a degree of absolution, but nonetheless, he was in a way also out of the picture. And what this meant was, in the in its the absence of many of its leaders, the Lazanska was getting bit by bit ground away. 

Now, Nukhaev would actually, in due course, as I say, return to Moscow. But before then, while he was holed up in Baku, where he had invested a lot of his money in Azerbaijan, he gave a whole series of very lengthy interviews with the Russian-American, well, American but of Russian origin extraction, journalist Paul Klebnikov of Forbes magazine. And this provided the basis of what became a book. Conversation with a barbarian, interviews with a Chechen field commander on banditry and Islam. And in some ways, it's actually a pretty interesting book, actually. We have Nukhaev discussing his past, including his involvement in criminal activities, and in creating the so-called Caucasus common market. And you also have Nukhaev arguing, frankly, for the superiority of Islamic Chechen sort of clan and tribal-based social systems. But still, Nukhaev was not at all happy when the book came out in 2003. I mean, let's be honest, Conversation with a Barbarian is not the kind of title which is likely to endear you, especially because at the time he was trying to reinvent himself now as a legitimate political actor. Of all things, he actually got actively involved in the work of Alexander Dugin, the now still infamous Russian nationalist philosopher, anyway, in his Eurasia Party. In 2001, he actually used a party press conference in Moscow to propose that Chechnya be divided into North Chechnya, the plains, the lowland regions within the Russian Federation, and mountainous South Chechnya, which would be a sort of semi-independent, autonomous region, still closely linked to Russia and very much hostile to the extreme Islamic fundamentalism. But so, you know, he had this he had this vision, and no doubt he saw himself as a potential kingmaker in in South Chechnya. 

But still, this book came out, it derailed some of his plans, it embarrassed him, and it seems to be that he also thought that Paul Klebnikov had basically pulled a fast one, that he didn't think that it was just going to turn up verbatim in a book. That same well, sorry, next year came out in 2003, so this is 2004, Klebnikov was gunned down in central Moscow. And it's assumed that Nukhaev was behind this, and frankly, I think assumed correctly. What was interesting though, that again, as Nukhaev was trying to legitimize himself, he was also trying to legitimize himself with the Vorovskoi Mir and the rest of the criminal world. And killing an American journalist in Moscow was a big deal. It was interesting at this time that there was still, in effect, an understanding that you don't go after foreigners. Foreigners were the geese that laid the golden eggs. You did not want to scare them away, you just simply wanted to, as the expression went, iron them, to basically get whatever money you could out of them. And the idea of killing someone like Klebnikov was sufficiently sensitive that it actually had to become the subject of a skhodka, which is again a gathering of underworld leaders. And eventually they decided that Klebnikov was in some ways acting sufficiently Russian, breaking the rules and so forth, that he could be treated like a Russian, which in other words meant that Nukhaev could actually have him killed. That's how I heard it. I mean, I can't actually say this is absolutely proven, but I heard this from multiple sources within both the Russian underworld but also the Russian police services. So Klebnikov was killed, and fine, that may well have satisfied Nukhayev's desire for revenge, but on the other hand, he wasn't going to enjoy it for long. He would disappear in 2004. 

Now, one version is that he actually ended up, again, going back and joining the rebel fighters. We're talking about the era of the Second Chechen War, after all, and was killed in the mountains of Dagestan. According to another, he just simply decided to leave, disappeared forever, and no doubt enjoyed the rest of his ill-gotten gains, sipping daiquiris on a beach somewhere. I don't actually believe that that's true. Equally likely, though, is that he was sitting lying in an unmarked grave or fed into a wood chipper, either by his rivals or by the FSB, who really didn't want him beginning to become a sort of respectable face of Chechen nationalism. Either way, he's out the scene and the gang is in trouble. 

Now, the irony is after all that in the 1990s, the Chechen reputation for violence had actually meant that in some cases they could afford to be less violent because no one was going to mess with them. And that actually meant that if you look outside Moscow at large swaths of the country, effectively the Chechens could really create a franchise. So, in other words, they would allow people to pay for the rights to be able to say, we work with the Chechens, knowing full well that that meant that people were much less likely to push back against them. So, in this respect, they had actually managed to quite effectively commercialize their reputation for primal violence. On the other hand, there wasn't really any room for that kind of activity in Moscow. And given the role of several people from within the Lazanskaya gang in the Chechen conflict, it meant that increasingly they were under pressure. They were seen as dangerous, they were seen as kind of a destabilizing force, and that they had therefore had to take risks to a far greater extent, risks that often would basically backlash. 

This was visible in October 2006, when it was members of the gang that carried out the contract killing of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Polikovskaya, again one of the sort of the giants of investigative reporting at the time, and a consistent thorn in the Kremlin side. Now, the crime was orchestrated by again one of the senior remaining figures, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, and carried out by three brothers, Rustam, Jabrail and Ibrahim Makhmudov. Now who commissioned the killing? Well, we'll never know for sure. But Ramzan Kadyrov is a pretty safe bet. Now Putin is very unlikely to have shed a tear over Politkovskaya, who hardly coincidentally was gunned down on his birthday. But on the other hand, this, what seems to have been intended as a gift from Kadyrov, was also actually a deep embarrassment. It was just too blatant. And it actually provided an opportunity for the authorities to crack down yet further. Gaitukayev and the Makhmudov brothers were all subsequently arrested. 

So what we had was a situation in which the remains of the Lazanskya gang were now associated with Kadyrov back in Chechnya. But that didn't actually mean that they lived a charmed life. Because there was a rival Yandarbiyev clan that was still around and active and again straddled the military, political, criminal worlds, the same as the Kadyrovs. It had its own underworld allies, it was very happy to attack the Lazanskaya gang as really an indirect way of attacking the Kadyrovs. And besides, by now, actually, the reputation for violence was that much less impressive. Atlangerieev, the last remaining sort of founder, he tried to legitimise himself and become an honest businessman. But that didn't work. He was last seen in 2008 getting into an unknown car right in the centre of Moscow at the Karetny Dvor restaurant, which is interesting, that particular restaurant. It was later going to become the hangout and base of operations of Aslan Usoyan, so-called Ded Khasan, who was assassinated coming out of it in 2013. So it's a restaurant with a certain reputation. Anyway, what happened to Atlangireev? Well, the rumour is that he was the victim of a blood feud and was bundled into that car, returned to Chechnya, killed and buried. Certainly he disappeared. 

And the last remnants, frankly, of Lazanskaya, really could be said to have been buried in 2010, when Lom Ali Gautukayev and Rustam Makhmudov finally received life sentences connected to the Palitkovskaya killing. So basically, Lazanskaya is no more. Now, why have I indulged myself by telling you this story? 

Well, first of all, yes, of course, because it's just a kind of arcane and bloody history of criminality in which I'm interested. 

But also because these days the Chechen mob, the Chechen mafia in wider Russia, it's still very significant, but it's very much under control. It's essentially, let's use the word house-trained. And the Presidential Hotel in Moscow is not just really the headquarters of the official Chechen presence. It's where, for example, Adam Delimkhanov, the so-called man with the golden gun, he does indeed actually have a gold-plated gun, but who is also the State Duma representative for Chechnya. I mean, he basically lives there. I had a fun experience, obviously, years back when I was still travelling there. I had been put up by the institution which had invited me in the Presidential Hotel, which, as I said, is absolutely packed full of Chechens. And also, it has along one corridor a list of the pictures of heads of state who have stayed there, including people like Erich Honecker of East Germany. So it's definitely not reinventing itself. And at one point I was thinking, actually, you know, I've got a free morning, I think I'll go to the gym. And I went into the gym and it was packed full, essentially, of Chechen bodyguards pumping iron for all they were worth. And I thought, hmm, maybe I'll go for a walk instead. But the Presidential Hotel is also frankly regarded as the coordination centre of Chechen organized crime in Russia. That's where the key decisions are made. More to the point, that's where disputes are resolved and such like. 

However, if, as is once again claimed, now with increasing degrees of evidence that Kadyrov is really ill, and this year, the year in fact where there's anyway meant to be elections in Chechnya, may well see him lose power in the only way that was ever likely, by also losing his life, we're going to have to see if this orderly state of affairs continues, because there's already some signs of restiveness amongst not just Chechen, but generally North Caucasus gangs in Russia, with Chechens potentially not so much the leaders of a resurgence of ethnically based strife, but the catalysts. Remember, what we are seeing and have since 2022, with the impact of sanctions and the whole restructuring the economy and so forth, has been pressures on the existing criminal status quo. And although the authorities are very keen to try and keep that status quo surviving, the last thing they want is a new round of turf wars and such like. Nonetheless, it is coming under greater pressure. And there is a fear that all it takes is a spark to ignite some wider conflagration. It's not going to be like the 1990s fully, but certainly something that's a lot less controlled, stable, and bloodless than now. Well, actually, Kadyrov's death, the end of the coordination and control of the Chechens might represent that spark. The Chechens, after all, had for a long time, frankly, lost their edge. They got too comfortable, too rich, too established, less willing to take the insane risks, which is how they in some ways established themselves in the first place. Now, though, we're actually beginning to see a new generation emerging who may well regain that edge, particularly because a fair number of them essentially have been diverted into serving in the special military operation, not necessarily in Wagner or whatever, but in units, Chechen units, like for example, Akhmat, who actually were not really doing much fighting. They're rather too busy looting and racketeering behind the front line. When the war ends, and someday it will end, well, uh, where are they going to come home to? Are they going to go back to Chechnya or are they going to actually decide to follow their new trade into Russia along with so many other veterans. 

This also actually has international implications. Last year, interestingly, there was a 15-year-old Dutch kid shot an alleged Chechen mafia boss in the legs in a bakery in Hamburg. It's interesting this point about 15-year-old. We're seeing this, we saw this in Scandinavia, and we're now seeing this also spread in the Low Countries, that gangs are using minors for some of their most violent and dangerous operations precisely because they are not going to get the same prison sentences. So welcome to a new age of a young teenage gangsters. Anyway, this particular hit, which was probably a warning because he was definitely told to shoot the guy in the legs rather than anything else, and indeed he was then chased down by the Chechen's bodyguards, given a good beating, and also shot in the legs, you know, tit for tat. This is part of a rivalry between Chechen and Dutch drug gangs, which actually echoes wider issues of Chechen versus local drug gangs. They're involved not just in the obvious heroin trade but also synthetic drugs and indeed cocaine. And there is a concern that we could see a renewed movement of young Chechens out into Europe, probably via Georgia. Again, a new generation with a lot to gain, not much to lose, and turf to win. 

Now look, I don't want all this to be alarmist. I'm not, as I say, I'm not seeing a rerun of the 1990s in Russia's or Europe's future. But I do think this is something to watch. And I do think specifically the Lazanskaya story is quite indicative and in a way raises some of the wider trends which we need to be thinking about. First of all, again, the outsiders with nothing to lose, and a tradition of violence and clannishness that also means that, for example, they tend to be so much more solidly engaged within their ethnic communities, they're much less likely to turn states' evidence and inform to the authorities. Chechnya is now and will continue to be a safe haven for their activities. So if, for example, we do in the future see post-war a resumption of more trade but also transport links, well, that's something that we need to be aware of. But as is, there's already a lot of traffic between Chechnya and the UAE and such like. And so we are seeing criminal activities coordinated through the Middle East coming into Europe. That's something that could that could uh become magnified. And finally, what was interesting is precisely the way that the Chechens learnt the importance of involvement in politics. Politics of different levels, criminal politics, but also national level politics. In some ways, looking to try and trade their capacity to provide money and the deployment of violence for a degree of legitimacy and protection within the community. Now, again, I'm not for a moment thinking that we're going to see that happening on a national level within Europe. Of course not, we're not there. But on the other hand, within various migrant communities, the possibility for the Chechens not just simply to become authority figures, but to in some ways offer this particular model to other ethnic criminals, I think should not be underestimated. 

So Lazanskaya is dead and buried, I'm glad to say. But shall we say the lessons of Lazanskaya are still worth remembering. Okay, now that was my New Year's treat to myself, a massively self-indulgent deep dive at great length into just a specific single criminal organization. If you made it here to the end, well I hope you found it interesting, but above all, I thank you for your indulgence. And well, we'll see what comes next week. Thanks for listening. 

Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadow Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. Follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or Facebook, Mark Galeotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash In Moscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.