Stanislav Reshetnyak, a Russian internet personality known online as Reeflay who was imprisoned over the death of his girlfriend during a livestream, has been spotted on a dating app, according to a fellow blogger who posts under the name kurudzhi.
The blogger posted a video on Instagram, which is owned by Meta and has been banned in Russia after Meta was designated an extremist organisation there, showing a screenshot of what she said was Reshetnyak's dating profile. The profile listed his name as Stanislav, his age as 39 and his location as Moscow, she said. She urged women to be cautious when searching for partners through dating apps.
Kurudzhi later posted a second video saying the dating app had restricted access to her own account. She suggested the restriction might be connected to her having publicised information about the trash streamer.
Multiple profiles reported
The Russian outlet Baza reported on Telegram that several dating profiles bearing Reshetnyak's name had turned up on different apps. One of them, according to Baza, listed Amsterdam as his place of residence.
The 2020 livestream death
Reshetnyak built an online following as a so-called trash streamer, a genre of Russian livestreaming centred on humiliation, degradation and shock content performed for a paying online audience. On the night of 2 December 2020, he quarrelled with his girlfriend, Valentina, during a broadcast, beat her and forced her outside without a coat.
He later found her unconscious. Viewers watched him try to resuscitate her on camera before he called an ambulance, but she could not be saved.
A court subsequently found Reshetnyak guilty of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm resulting in death and sentenced him to six years in prison. The case drew wide attention in Russia at the time as an example of how far trash-streaming content had gone in pursuit of an audience.
Release from custody
News that Reeflay had been released from the penal colony emerged in February 2024. A court had softened his sentence, converting the remainder of his prison term into forced labour rather than continued imprisonment.
The renewed attention to Reshetnyak comes after kurudzhi's videos began circulating online, prompting her warning to other users of dating apps to be careful about who they might encounter. Baza's report of multiple profiles, including one giving an address abroad in Amsterdam, suggests Reshetnyak may have used more than one listing across different platforms. Neither kurudzhi nor Baza detailed what, if anything, the dating apps involved have said about the profiles or about kurudzhi's restricted account.
