The Belgorod District Court sentenced Alexey Marushchenko, founder of the private military company Yastreb, to 18 years in a strict-regime penal colony. He was found guilty on a range of charges under the Russian Criminal Code, including organizing killings, kidnapping, abuse of official authority and fraud.
The verdict came on the evening of August 4, just an hour after the prosecutor supporting the state's case told the court that Marushchenko's guilt had been fully proven and asked for a 20-year sentence.
Marushchenko, who went by the callsign Doctor, was convicted alongside charges of kidnapping and torturing servicemen who refused to obey him. The court partially granted the compensation claims brought by victims. Investigators say he also extorted money from people seeking to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry. Around 100 people were recognized as victims in the case. Marushchenko was detained in the Kursk region in 2025 and, in late June, confessed to a series of grave crimes against participants in the special military operation.
Alongside Marushchenko, Artur Velisevich, founder of the Bryansk-based private security firm Yaguar, and other defendants were sent to pretrial detention. Nine people stood trial in the Belgorod region, and one of them reportedly may have struck a deal with investigators.
Order to kill a soldier
According to investigators and the court, Marushchenko ordered the killing of Private Rashid Adzhiev after the soldier refused to obey him. He told subordinates to deal with Adzhiev in order to maintain his authority.
On December 21, 2024, the soldier was led into a forest, where Ivan Babenko shot him twice in the back of the head with an automatic rifle. Babenko later confessed, saying he could not disobey Marushchenko out of fear for his own life. During the hearings, Adzhiev's relatives filed a claim against Marushchenko for 36 million rubles in damages, 12 million rubles each for his parents and brother.
Torture of soldiers by subordinates
Marushchenko was also charged over the beating of serviceman Dmitry Poloumov, callsign Fizruk, for attempting to desert. The injuries Poloumov suffered proved incompatible with life. The only surviving Yastreb medic, known by the callsign Punk, testified in this episode.
Punk told investigators about a common practice among Marushchenko's subordinates called "ruchеyok," or little stream, in which fighters caught drinking or using banned substances were tied to a birch tree and beaten. Beyond the Poloumov case, Marushchenko was charged over the beatings of three more soldiers, all of whom had refused to follow his orders. Investigators also found that between August 2024 and February 2025, Yastreb fighters stole pistols, rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition from their unit to resell.
Fraud and kidnappings
Investigators say Marushchenko and his accomplices defrauded 90 recruits who paid millions of rubles to serve with the PMC in rear-line positions but were instead sent to the front. Marushchenko and his associates were also accused of kidnapping and extortion.
Their first victim was a sergeant serving in the Belgorod region. Accomplices disarmed him and took him to the village of Myasoyedovo, where the PMC's base was located. There he was handcuffed to a tree and beaten for several days before being released after paying 500,000 rubles.
Investigators also concluded that Marushchenko and others were involved in the September 2024 kidnapping of military correspondent Roman Semenov, who had clashed with Yastreb while investigating its illegal activity and passing information to law enforcement. Semenov, from St. Petersburg, was taken to a field camp in the town of Luga, where he was beaten and waterboarded, then transported to Myasoyedovo and held for 12 days in a vertically buried coffin. Yastreb fighters demanded a ransom of one million rubles from his wife, who went to police and secured his release.
Origins of Marushchenko's PMCs
Marushchenko described himself as a former GRU officer and a participant in the second Chechen campaign, and said he was from a St. Petersburg family with military traditions. He founded the PMCs Mar and Vezhlivye Lyudi in 2014 in connection with events in Ukraine and Crimea.
Those companies initially presented themselves as a volunteer association with a core of around 70 armed fighters and up to 400 people involved in humanitarian projects. Yastreb itself was registered in St. Petersburg in 2018. According to its recruitment advertising, new members received a one-time payment of 1.8 million rubles, with salaries starting at 210,000 rubles.
Suspected coup plot in Belarus
In 2020, fighters from PMC Mar were detained in Belarus on the eve of the presidential election involving Alexander Lukashenko, suspected of preparing a coup, before being handed over to Russia and released. Marushchenko maintained that the PMC had completed its work back in 2018 and had since been shut down.
Marushchenko said the only evidence cited by media linking Mar to the events in Belarus was a briefly glimpsed tattoo on one detainee's arm that allegedly resembled tattoos belonging to the PMC's former head. He said his own view was that the men had simply been passing through Belarus in transit to another country where they were due to work, noting that, by his information, they were detained without weapons or communication equipment. He called the situation absurd and said no one had clearly been preparing any provocation.
