Nikolai Boytsov, a 79-year-old accused of poisoning 35 people with toxic bootleg alcohol in Russia, has died in a hospital following a chronic illness.
Boytsov was being held in pre-trial detention in Leningrad Oblast before prison officials moved him to a city hospital earlier this year. The press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service directorate for Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast confirmed to Russian news outlet KP.RU that he died from natural causes linked to a long-term condition.
Known to his customers as Grandpa Kolya, Boytsov was arrested under a criminal investigation into mass poisonings in north-western Russia. Investigators said he sold lethal surrogate alcohol that had been stolen directly from a police warehouse storing confiscated contraband spirits.
The victims of the contaminated liquor were not marginalized people, but well-off residents living in the town of Slantsy. According to investigators, Boytsov sold the toxic liquid under the cover story that workers had stolen authentic factory spirit, telling customers it was cleaner than shop-bought vodka.
Theft from police warehouse
The official investigation revealed that the deadly methanol came from a storage facility in the village of Trubnikov Bor. Law enforcement agencies had organized the warehouse to secure batches of counterfeit ethyl alcohol and alcoholic products seized during police operations.
A businessman with previous convictions for economic crimes was managing all operations at the warehouse site. In the spring of 2025, the operator stopped paying wages to the warehouse staff. In response, unpaid workers stole containers of the stored alcohol and sold them to two friends who had spent years trading in illicit liquor.
Those two intermediaries then passed the stolen alcohol along the supply chain to Boytsov, who distributed it to his local clients. Public awareness of the surrogate alcohol poisonings in Leningrad Oblast first emerged on September 26, 2025. Most of the poisoned victims lived in the industrial town of Slantsy, located in western Leningrad Oblast near the border with Estonia, and in the neighboring rural community of Gostitsy.
Kremlin reaction and regulatory controls
Methanol is a toxic industrial solvent that resembles drinkable ethyl alcohol in smell, taste, and appearance, making it undetectable without chemical analysis. Even tiny amounts of the compound can cause severe metabolic poisoning, permanent blindness, and rapid organ failure.
The scale of the poisonings drew high-level attention from the Russian government in Moscow. Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, called the incident an extraordinary event, pointing out that it occurred despite Russia maintaining strict laws governing the sale and distribution of alcohol products.
In the Russian penal system, criminal suspects are held in remand prisons known as SIZO facilities while investigators prepare evidence for trial. Federal penitentiary officials confirmed that Boytsov remained under state custody until his hospital transfer and subsequent death from natural causes.
