Zakhary Kalashov, a Georgian-born crime boss known across Russia's underworld as Shakro Molodoy, has become the country's top-ranked "vor v zakone," or thief-in-law, the traditional title held by senior figures in Russian and Soviet organized crime. He took the position after a gunman killed the previous criminal patriarch, Aslan Usoyan, known as Ded Khasan, in 2013.
Kalashov's rise runs through Soviet prisons, the mafia wars of 1990s Moscow, a lengthy prison term in Spain and a 2018 conviction in Russia for extortion. He was released on parole in March 2024 and has since kept a low profile.
A noble Yazidi lineage
Kalashov was born on March 20, 1953, in Tbilisi, Georgia. He comes from a Yazidi family, members of a small ethnic group that follows a religion rooted in Zoroastrianism and blending elements of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Yazidis speak Kurdish and live mainly in northern Iraq.
Usoyan, the crime boss Kalashov eventually succeeded, was also Yazidi. But Kalashov comes from the "pir" clan, which holds a more privileged status than Usoyan's clan, and his father was known as "Knyaz," meaning Prince, a further mark of high standing within the community.
Kalashov recognized early that his lineage carried weight in the criminal world. He received his first prison sentence for theft at 17, when a Tbilisi court gave him three years. That same year, while still in the colony, he was crowned a vor v zakone by fellow thieves-in-law Aivaz Mirzoev, known as Chipi, and Dzhemal Mikeladze, known as Arsen.
Four more theft convictions followed through the 1970s and 1980s. Kalashov served the early sentences in colonies in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic before being transferred to a prison in Novocherkassk, in Russia's Rostov region. By the start of perestroika he had spent 15 years behind bars in total and had built a substantial reputation in the Soviet criminal world.
Building a mafia network in Europe
The turbulent 1990s found Kalashov in Moscow, where, according to fellow vor v zakone Rudolf Oganov, known as Rudik, he was at first "just one of many," despite his lengthy criminal record. His standing grew over the following years as rivals were killed off, often with outside help.
Aware that he could eventually become a target himself, Kalashov moved to Spain in 1999. There he went into business while continuing to draw the attention of Spanish police, who suspected him of involvement in a range of serious crimes.
European investigators linked Kalashov to oil smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and killings, as well as to organizing criminal groups in Russia and along Spain's Mediterranean coast. His criminal operations and the money moving through them reached an international scale.
As police scrutiny intensified, Kalashov temporarily relocated to the United Arab Emirates, but was detained there in 2006 and extradited back to Spain, where he stood trial on charges of money laundering and organizing a criminal group.
A prison term in Spain
Spanish prosecutors accused Kalashov of leading the so-called "Clan of Eleven" on the Iberian Peninsula and a Russian-Georgian mafia network on the Costa del Sol, as well as maintaining ties to criminal groups in Russia and other former Soviet states. A Spanish court sentenced him to seven and a half years in prison and fined him 20 million euros.
While Kalashov was serving that sentence, Georgia launched a crackdown on thieves-in-law, making membership in the criminal caste itself a serious criminal offense. A Georgian court later convicted Kalashov in absentia of kidnapping American businessman Alex Crane, a co-owner of Moscow's Kristall casino, and sentenced him to 18 years.
Kalashov was released in Spain on October 29, 2014. Using his dual citizenship, he traveled directly to Russia rather than face extradition to Georgia. By then, Russia's criminal underworld had shifted dramatically.
Becoming Russia's top vor
Ded Khasan had led Russia's criminal world for years, and Kalashov had supported him as a fellow Yazidi in the early 1990s. But Khasan's aggressive tactics eventually put him in open conflict with Georgian criminal clans led by vory v zakone Lasha Shushanashvili, known as Rustavsky, and Tariel Oniani, known as Taro.
That feud cost Khasan his life. A sniper shot him dead on January 16, 2013, outside the Stary Faeton restaurant in Moscow. After his death, the title of Russia's top thief-in-law was informally reserved for Kalashov even before his return from Spanish custody, an arrangement understood both in the criminal world and by Russian law enforcement.
When Kalashov's plane landed in Russia in October 2014, he was taken directly from the aircraft to the Interior Ministry building on Zhitnaya Street in Moscow, questioned and released. For a time it seemed he would simply enjoy his standing, occasionally acting as an arbiter in disputes among criminal figures. That did not last.
Men tied to Kalashov staged a Moscow shootout
In February 2015, Kalashov instructed his bodyguard, Batyr Bekmuradov, known as Bek, and his closest associate, crime figure Andrei Kochuykov, known as Italyanets, to set up criminal groups to extort money and property from businessmen. The two acquired two private security firms, Zashchitnik and Zaslon, which let them legally obtain weapons. Both companies were staffed with figures from the criminal world, former athletes and men with combat experience.
At the end of 2015, Kalashov's men opened fire in central Moscow outside the Elements restaurant on Rochdelskaya Street. The gang had tried to extort the restaurant's owner, Zhanna Kim, but she assembled a group that armed itself and resisted. Two people were killed and eight wounded in the shootout, an incident that set off a chain of consequences.
Law enforcement detained Italyanets after the shooting, and Kalashov began paying bribes to secure his release. Those bribes cost four senior officials of Russia's Investigative Committee their jobs and freedom: former head of the Moscow department Major General Alexander Drymanov, his former deputy Denis Nikandrov, head of internal security Mikhail Maksimenko and his deputy Alexander Lamonov. Three police officers who had been at the scene were convicted of negligence.
Kalashov himself was detained on July 12, 2016. On March 29, 2018, Moscow's Nikulinsky Court sentenced him to nearly 10 years in a strict-regime penal colony for extortion. Kochuykov, his associate, received eight years and 10 months.
A quiet life since release
Kalashov served his sentence without incident at Penal Colony No. 2 in the settlement of Dvubratsky, in Russia's Krasnodar region. He resurfaced in February 2022, shortly before the start of Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, calling on criminal figures to set aside old grudges and unite. He complained that the criminal world had fallen into collapse brought on by hasty decisions and lawlessness among its own ranks.
Two years later, on March 13, 2024, a court in Krasnodar granted his request for parole, and he was released on March 29, 2024. According to some reports, he may have gone to join associates in Sochi or Abkhazia after his release.
In December 2025, Kalashov appeared at a farewell ceremony for businessman Viktor Averin, who died after his boat capsized at a yacht club in Mytishchi while he was piloting it. Media reports said Kalashov has serious health problems, but he chose to attend in person. There has been no further news of him since, and he is now said to be living an entirely closed-off life, preferring to settle matters from the shadows.
