The death of Sobchak - how it happened. The death of Anatoly Sobchak - the mystery remains Why did Anatoly Sobchak die

Interesting 14.03.2024

Interesting

Dilya Enikeeva, psychiatrist, professor

I write psychosexual portraits both so that, in the words of Peter the Great, “everyone’s stupidity is visible to everyone,” and so that the character of my psychosexual analysis has the opportunity to see himself from the outside, through the eyes of a psychiatrist-sex therapist, and draw conclusions.

Anatoly Sobchak died from Viagra

And today the former head of the security of the President of Russia is aware of all the secrets

Alexander Korzhakov to Felix Medvedev

http://www.flb.ru/info/40243.html

Bed room democrat

I would like to ask you, Alexander Vasilyevich, a question that, I am sure, is still of interest to many: why and how did Anatoly Sobchak die? You almost certainly know the secret of the death of Yeltsin’s opponent.

It’s difficult to answer your question exactly, but my colleagues spoke on this topic immediately after the death of Sobchak, who passed away on a business trip near Kaliningrad. The truth is that the visiting politician was brought to his Svetlogorsk hotel room for entertainment by two local beauties. Sobchak, as they say, was not only zealous, but also the organ that supports the man in a man at any age. Sobchak had a heart condition and died from using Viagra, which was then considered a strong assistant in amorous affairs. The heart could not cope with the extra load.

Another thing is - did it all happen as rumors say, or did the special services send an undesirable politician to the next world? Of course, they know how to do this if necessary. And now all the investigators have been knocked off their feet in search of the poisoner, the same Litvinenko. But it seems to me that poor Sobchak really could have died, I would say, so frivolously. If it had been otherwise, I mean any attempts on his life on the part of his rivals in the political struggle, then Lyudmila Narusova would have made such a fuss throughout Mother Race that many would have sent shreds flying through the back streets. I know her as a super scandalous woman.

Nobody killed Sobchak, he just drank a lot

Sobchak faked all his heart attacks. There was not a single scar on the deceased's heart

“Interlocutor”, 08/17/2000

They lied twice about the true cause of Sobchak's death

Polina Ivmnushkina

Sobchak was spoiled by women and the housing issue

Lady with Sobchak

"Career", February 1999

Konstantin Zbrovsky

Lyudmila Narusova, the wife of the former mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, was nicknamed “our Raisa Maksimovna” in the city on the Neva. Like the wife of the President of the USSR, Narusova took the most ardent part in the fate and career of her husband. And with a similar result.

Lately, Sobchak has been plagued by various troubles: gossip, rumors, accusations of corruption. Narusova, as befits a faithful wife, protects her husband. One problem is that the more violently she does this, the more trouble Anatoly Alexandrovich gets into.

Not so long ago, the Petersburg-Express newspaper reported: Sobchak had a mistress - beauty contest participant Yulia Vetoshnova. Observers have noticed more than once that the mayor of the city talked very affectionately with the twenty-two-year-old beauty. Just like Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky at the White House. Vetoshnova’s bosom friends said: “This fool herself boasted that she had a lover, Sobchak.” They also claim that Sobchak got Vetoshnova a job as the director of the St. Petersburg Trussardi store (she no longer works there) and helped her purchase a two-room apartment in the city center, near St. Vladimir Cathedral, for only $9 thousand.

There was no sex scandal out of this story. And about the wife of the ex-mayor Lyudmila Narusova in the city they said: “Serves her right.”

When asked what Anatoly Sobchak did as mayor, St. Petersburg residents most often answer: “Nothing special.” Then they remember: yes, he helped Pugacheva register her marriage with Kirkorov. I sold the mansion to Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya. He organized some festivals in the city and renamed the city of Leningrad to St. Petersburg. The region, however, remained Leningrad. The roads in the northern capital are still such that you can’t walk or drive through them.

In general, the story is standard and sad: having come to power in the turbulent year of 1991, four years later Sobchak successfully lost first the mayoral elections, and then the gubernatorial elections.

And a year ago, all honest Peter found out that the first democratic ex-mayor of the city was dishonest: he was given bribes, but he did not seem to refuse, lived in a luxurious apartment near the Hermitage - in general, he took full advantage of his official position. When law enforcement agencies allegedly decided to bring him to clean water, like in the Neva, and summoned Sobchak for questioning, Narusova took her husband to France, and she launched a wide campaign in St. Petersburg in his defense. According to the ex-mayor, by fabricating a certain “Leningrad case” against Sobchak, the authorities are trying to denigrate the entire Russian democracy, one of the last symbols of which is Anatoly Alexandrovich. And which Narusova helped him personify with all her might.

And then I come out in a dazzling white tailcoat

At the turn of the 80s and 90s, Sobchak was indeed the face of democracy, and a very attractive and talkative face. Tall, respectable, with a masculine appearance. With his fierce gaze and intensity he looks like a fighting rooster. And at the same time an intellectual, a professor. Sobchak danced well and dressed well, which was a rarity among politicians in those days. He looked ideal in light suits (not every man successfully passes this test.) He could speak perfectly (however, this is professional, after all, he is a lawyer).

Actually, Anatoly Aleksandrovich owes much of his successful “walk to power” not so much to his democratic views as to his external appearance and oratorical talent. In 1989, Sobchak became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, literally talking over the other candidates. He often spoke at spontaneous rallies near the Vasileostrovskaya metro station, arguing that the country needed democratic changes. People listened with their mouths open and admired how the new St. Petersburg politicians were giving heat to the old guard of the communists. Two years later, the deputy and democrat Sobchak became mayor, defeating the communist Yuri Sevenard in the elections. Also largely thanks to his oratorical abilities. Professional builder Sevenard hopelessly lost to professional Chrysostom Sobchak in a television debate. Then a joke arose: “They hounded us with dogs.”

All this time, his wife Lyudmila Narusova was next to Sobchak. A faithful assistant in the struggle for democracy, associate professor at the Krupskaya Institute of Culture. She typed documents, collected signatures in support of Sobchak, and argued with his opponents at rallies. Well, just like Nadezhda Konstantinovna. And when her husband became mayor in 1991, getting into big politics, Narusova became first lady. And then there was confusion. Protest democracy and power are not at all the same thing.

They say that the main sin of the “first call” democrats was not that they stole, but that their behavior compromised the very idea of democracy. Sobchak wouldn't even have to steal. Narusova was enough.

As soon as the mayor’s couple showed up at some buffet or presentation (which, by the way, became the calling card of the new St. Petersburg government), the next day the outfits and manners of the mayor’s wife were discussed by the whole city. Observers were worried about the only question: why wasn’t she cold? Adding fuel to the fire was Alexander Nevzorov, who for his “600 seconds” liked to film the mayor and his wife chewing and drinking with a hidden camera.

There really was something to photograph, even if you forget about the mayor’s revealing outfits. It turned out that Sobchak obscenely quickly destroys everything that is on his plate. The mayor himself explained that this was from the hungry war years. Then you had to eat from a common pot, and whoever was lazy didn’t get it; he went hungry all day. But Sobchak didn’t want to go hungry.

However, Anatoly Alexandrovich was more or less calm about Nevzorov’s escapades. Apparently, the mayor understood by what laws a public politician lives. Unlike his wife, who always rushed into battle. Nevzorov seemed to be deliberately egging on the mayor’s wife, spreading rumors that she had a mirrored ceiling in her bedroom. They say I saw it myself. Once Narusova, in a fit of rage, even tried to break the camera lens. In retaliation, Nevzorov began giving the mayor's wife nicknames. One of them stuck with Narusova for a long time - “the lady in a turban.” She was especially often called this by participants in official events, who often had to wait a long time for the mayor and his wife to arrive. The Sobchak couple were always late. What can you do, the guests sighed: she’s a provincial - she is a provincial.

Girl with no address

Lyuda Narusova was indeed born and raised in the provinces - in Bryansk. After graduating from school with only straight A's, she came to Leningrad and immediately entered the Faculty of History at Leningrad State University. Student Narusova was an excellent student and was sweet and sociable. So much so that she soon married a medical student. Who was five years older than her and, by the way, had a Leningrad residence permit. True, Lyudmila, according to her, very quickly realized that the true goal of her insidious chosen one was to marry “the girl with windows on Nevsky.” (It is unclear, however, why he then chose the “limit girl” Narusova.) In 1973, she decided to divorce her husband. And as compensation for your ruined youth, sue him for his living space. However, it is not so easy to rob even a loved one.

Ms. Narusova visited lawyers and jurists throughout the city, but to no avail. Finally, her supervisor (at that time Narusova was already a graduate student at the Academy of Sciences) advised her to contact Associate Professor Sobchak. The meeting of graduate student Narusova and associate professor Sobchak within the walls of a legal consultation became a family legend.

By that time, Narusova, in her righteous struggle for living space, had already reached the chief lawyer of the city and could not believe that some assistant professor could help her. Sobchak solved the problem in no time.

Lyudmila decided to thank her savior: she bought flowers and prepared an envelope with money. Sobchak thanked her for the flowers, looked at Lyudmila with an appraising look and advised the girl...

Then there are two versions of what exactly Sobchak proposed to his future wife. Don't think anything bad. First: he offered to dress up with this money. Second: he suggested that Lyudmila eat more fruit. Narusova herself prefers option number two. At least, this is how the couple themselves told this story during the campaign for the election of mayor of the city.

Narusova won the fight for meters. But her doctor husband didn’t lose either. They say that after the divorce proceedings, he moved to Moscow or the Baltic states, got married there, and then settled in Australia.

A year later, Narusova caught the charming Sobchak at a party with mutual friends. Lyudmila was then 24. Sobchak was 38. She reminded him of her divorce. Anatoly Sobchak was also a free man. That evening they realized that they were made for each other.

By the way, despite all his external gloss, Sobchak also went through a cruel school of survival and did not immediately become a popular person: he was born in Chita, grew up in Tashkent. For some reason, the mayor of St. Petersburg does not like to remember life in Uzbekistan, and this period is absent from his official biographies. But it was in Tashkent that Sobchak entered the law department of the local university, and transferred to Leningrad later. (Evil tongues say that he would hardly have acted “directly.”)

There is something deeply symbolic in this union of two resilient provincials, strengthened in the struggle for real estate in the capital. By the way, Sobchak helped Narusova with such ease in dividing the apartment also because he had his own rich experience. Shortly before meeting Narusova, he successfully divided the apartment and property with his first wife.

Renaissance on the Moika

Lyudmila Narusova is extremely annoyed when the famous apartment on the Moika, in which the mayor’s family settled after the victory of democracy in St. Petersburg, is called “Sobchak’s apartment.” What does Sobchak have to do with it - after all, according to the documents, this luxurious property belongs to Narusova and her parents, whom she transported to St. Petersburg from Bryansk! By the way, numerous relatives of Sobchak from Tashkent also settled in St. Petersburg and its nearby suburbs - with the help of a certain Renaissance company.

However, Sobchak’s (sorry – Narusova’s) apartment can really only be called luxurious with some stretch. After the couple added another hundred meters of attic space to their mansion for an art studio (it turned out that Narusova has a penchant for fine art) and carried out European-quality renovations, the old St. Petersburg house could not stand it. Cracks ran along the walls of the building, doorways were warped, and pipes burst in some places. Neighbors complained about the Sobchaks to various government authorities to no avail. In response, Narusova suggested that the neighbors disperse on good terms. That is, don’t get in the way, sell her your apartments and move.

One of the mayor’s neighbors, engineer Moiseenko, was even beaten by Narusova’s security guard in her presence, after he once again came to complain about a leak and refused a counter offer to vacate the living space...

In general, in recent years, Sobchak has somehow faded into the shadows. He always lost first one, then another election. His wife, on the contrary, became a State Duma deputy, having passed on the NDR list (the recommendation was given by her husband). And I felt like a politician. Now Sobchak received punishment at home not only for unironed trousers, but also for being too “soft in some matters.” Well, he had been cooking for a long time, and he was always busy with the child.

Medicine is powerless here

Narusova’s “finest hour” was the operation to secretly smuggle Sobchak to Paris. Here is how it was.

When the prosecutor's office became interested in the warm relations of that same Renaissance company with the city authorities, a group of investigators came to the St. Petersburg UNESCO Center, where the ex-mayor served, to “invite him to testify.” Anatoly Sobchak understood this phrase as “going out with things” and called his wife. Lyudmila Narusova rushed to save her husband. One cannot help but feel sorry for the law enforcement officials who had to restrain its furious pressure. At first, she told investigators that she would not let her husband go anywhere. Then she said that if it was really necessary to go, she would go with him, since he had a heart condition.

Here Sobchak’s heart really hurt. And when he got to the prosecutor's office, he turned pale green. Narusova demanded to call an ambulance, and it took Sobchak to the 122nd medical unit. While the ex-mayor lay under a drip, his wife told all Russian TV channels a detective story about the interrogation of her husband. The newspapers could not find out for a long time whether there was or was not a riot police squad at the entrance of the UNESCO mansion, which, as Lyudmila Narusova said, was sent for Sobchak. She stated that she would not leave the case like this and would charge the investigator for particularly important cases of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Nikolai Mikheev, with “consciously obstructing the timely provision of medical care.”

At the clinic of the Military Medical Academy, a council of doctors determined that Sobchak had acute myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease, post-infarction angina and thrombosis of the left ventricle of the heart. They began to prepare Sobchak for surgery. “He could be stabbed to death, stabbed to death right on the table!” - Narusova lamented. She stated that she was being followed and her phones were being tapped. Then she refused to enter the entrance of her own house without an escort, despite the fact that the entrance was guarded around the clock. And finally she decided to take him to Paris to save her husband. Where, as they said, by that time Sobchak had already bought an apartment in the 16th Arrondissement, one of the most expensive areas of the French capital.

No, it is not sex or hunger that moves the world, as philosophers claim. Pipes! Housing problem! This is the only way expansion and self-assertion could look in a country of homeless and poor people. First a communal apartment, then your own hut on the outskirts, then closer to the center, then a mansion. Eventually you approach Paris.

What if we had the same abyss of energy and ingenuity for the reconstruction of the city!

Early in the morning of November 7, the Medexpress XC-125 plane took off from Pulkovo-2 airport to Paris with Sobchak on board. As Narusova explained, she decided to fly when law enforcement officers were still “not sober after celebrating the holiday at work.” On the plane, the mayor's wife, according to her, recalled the story of a South Korean Boeing shot down by Soviet fighters, but the fighters never appeared overboard. Sobchak was safely taken to the American Hospital of Paris. Journalists then went around in circles for a long time, but the hospital staff claimed that they did not have a patient named Sobtchak. (Narusova convinced the French to take all security measures.) A day later she was again in St. Petersburg - at press conferences she outlined the details of what happened and exposed the conspiracy of St. Petersburg prosecutors against democracy...

Many former colleagues and comrades of the St. Petersburg mayor believe that there is no “Leningrad case” that Narusova is making noise about, as well as a “state order” for Sobchak, so there is no point in hiding. However, married friends of Anatoly Alexandrovich add, Sobchak is actually calmer in Paris. There he (according to Narusova) rents a corner from a friend and improves his health. Gives lectures at the Sorbonne, writes books. (True, journalists did not find a lecturer named Sobtchak at the Sorbonne.)

Escaped from bodyguards

Ksyusha Sobchak is the light in the window for her grandparents.

After Ksyushenka’s birth, when Lyudmila went to work, she took her to us in Bryansk,” says Valentina Narusova. – He and Anatoly Alexandrovich worked, and we raised Ksyusha. She lived with us until she was four years old. And now he says that he will give his children to be raised only by me!

Ksyusha was a very lively girl. Grannies sat near our entrance all the time. Before each Sobchak’s visit to us, she approached these old women and started a conversation from afar: “Dad is coming soon...” They nodded silently. Then the granddaughter asked: “Are you going to tell dad how I behaved?” But I must say, Ksyusha was constantly playing around. The old women answered: “Yes, we’ll tell you.” Then four-year-old Ksyusha took away a crutch from one of them and threatened to throw it into the Desna River! To get the crutch back, the old women had no choice but to promise not to tell Sobchak about Ksyusha’s pranks.

When Ksyusha went to first grade, the first quarter had not yet ended, and Anatoly Alexandrovich had already been called to school, recalls Valentina Vladimirovna. “And this is what happened: one boy was constantly fighting and throwing pieces of paper on the floor. Ksyusha reprimanded him several times, and then could not stand it. I went to the wardrobe, took this boy’s jacket, hung it in the most visible place in the classroom and wrote on it in large letters: “For trash.” Ksyusha has always been a girl with character. When Sobchak became mayor, security was assigned to her. She hated her and constantly ran away from her bodyguards.

Ksyusha’s sense of justice comes from her mother. When Lyudmila was in 9th grade, one of her classmates was unfairly accused of being a thief. The boy stopped going to school. Lyuda, having learned about this, began to pick him up every day, and they went to classes together. Thanks to her, the boy completed his studies. Now he is a famous artist. When I met his mother in Bryansk, she bowed at my feet.

Of course, I couldn’t help but ask about the Narusovs’ attitude to the television program “Dom-2,” which is hosted by their granddaughter. After all, this program is often criticized for “immorality.” It turned out that pensioners do not miss a single episode of “House-2” with the participation of Ksyusha.

We like the program,” admitted Boris Moiseevich. – We turn on the TV and admire our granddaughter. So everything is fine with her. It's a pity we rarely see each other. But she calls often.

No, Ksyusha does not forget us. For my and Valentinino’s 80th birthday, he and Lyudmila gave us gold medals with heartfelt congratulations engraved on them. Now Lyudmila works in Moscow in the presidential administration as Putin’s adviser on cultural and humanitarian issues, and on weekends she comes to St. Petersburg, she has an apartment here. He comes to see us often. And she visited us at the dacha in the summer.

The family celebrated Valentina Vladimirovna’s anniversary at Nevsky Palace.

Ksyusha ordered the most famous St. Petersburg artists, and they played all evening especially for me,” Narusova says proudly. – And for our golden wedding, Lyudmila gave us a grand gift - she sent us on a trip to Germany. And we visited the places where we lived. They even found the house of the German who saved me from death. Unfortunately, he is no longer alive. But his children live in this house, and they were very happy to see us.

The former head of the Presidential Security Service (SBP) of Russia, and now deputy chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, Lieutenant General Alexander KORZHAKOV completed the construction of a country house. Due to a serious illness in his legs, the general has been living in nature without a break for several months.

Our journalists visited Alexander Vasilyevich in the village of Molokovo near Moscow and found out a couple of state secrets over a cup of tea. Felix MEDVEDEV, Larisa KUDRYAVTSEVA (photo)

The Presidential Security Service, led by you, was very effective and reliable. Okay, I'll take it higher - she was probably the best in the world. Can you tell us about the most brilliant operation you have performed?

It is too early to talk about much due to the special secrecy of operations. Some things, on the contrary, are losing relevance. I can tell you about one of Yeltsin’s air voyages. Boris Nikolayevich kept trying to visit Chechnya, but flying to a war-torn republic was dangerous. Suddenly the president gives me the command to prepare the visit. The only question arose about a convenient time. And it came when the head of Chechnya, Yandarbiev, with a delegation of his senior officials came to Moscow for negotiations. After the conversation between the two sides, the Chechen delegation went to relax at one of the state dachas.

And at that hour the decision was made to fly the president to Chechnya. Only Barsukov, Grachev and I knew about the blitz flight. Each along his line gave the command to bring the military personnel to a state of full combat readiness. The final destination of the visit was Khankala. My guys, members of the Security Service led by Rear Admiral Zakharov, had been there for several weeks already, waiting for hour X. And so they report: “Reception is ready on the hour.” Just at this time, the entire leadership of Chechnya was in the position of hostages in the Moscow region. The move was very ingenious. When Yandarbiev heard that Yeltsin was in Chechnya, he cursed angrily. Got it - he was tricked.

- How was the delivery of the “body” to the combat zone?- For several kilometers around the Mozdok airport, troops and the SBP cleared an area from where a Stinger anti-aircraft missile could be launched. We flew to Chechnya itself from Mozdok by helicopter using the “Afghan option” - 15 meters above the ground. A strip of land along the route was also cleared. 15 identical helicopters were flying, no one knew which of them was the main passenger. We've arrived. The official delegation led by the president communicated with the people, some negotiations were held, and at the end of the visit a banquet was given. What made this operation different at that heady time was that we had no doubt about its success. No Russian Roulette! We knew Yeltsin would be delivered safely to Moscow.

The last minute of the Secretary General

Who are the most hated people from Yeltsin's circle? Not in a personal sense, of course: I borrowed a ruble but didn’t pay it back. And in terms of government.

One of them, of course, is Gaidar. It was in the name of the state that he took huge amounts of money from millions of people, in fact, he stole all their personal savings. Including mine. Working in a cooperative in the 80s, I saved up 20 thousand in my savings book. What was left of them was nothing. My wife Irina Semyonovna was terribly worried about this. - You started protecting Yeltsin as First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU after working for Yuri Andropov.- Yuri Vladimirovich is a subject of special reflection for me. No matter what they say, no matter how they judge him, I am firmly convinced that if he had lived in the world for a few more years, the country would have been completely different. Including in the highest sense - it would be democratic. I would not have used such wording if I had not known Andropov personally. I was fortunate to be close to Andropov from the very beginning of his activities as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

Since my duties related to the functions of his security, I regularly had to communicate with Yuri Vladimirovich. Everyone says that, alas, Andropov was hopelessly ill, so why bet on him? I confirm, although I am not a doctor: at times he really seemed unwell, for he suffered from kidney disease. But, according to my personal conclusions, my “ward” lived a completely normal life and did not look like a hopeless old man. My feeling is that the Secretary General was treated, as they say, not according to the highest medical class. This treatment may have caused his premature death.

- Alexander Vasilyevich, your biography includes a particularly dramatic moment - Andropov’s passing from life.

Yes, it so happened that on the last day of Yuri Vladimirovich’s life I was in the service. I was in his room with the medical staff and saw the Secretary General connected to the machine. Everyone understood that in that situation the patient would not come out of the coma. They were waiting for Chernenko. He arrived together with the head of the 9th Directorate of the KGB, Plekhanov. Unfortunately, we had to watch the agony of one of the country's most outstanding statesmen. Everything was mixed up in these minutes - the majestic and the low, the protocol and the everyday: the transfer of top-secret folders, keys to the safe, the signing of the most important documents. Yes, at these moments the government was changing, and all the fuss in connection with this tragedy left an unpleasant impression on me. It was terrible to see the great man naked, excuse me, in white shorts, in his death throes. It seemed to me that Plekhanov was especially fussy - after all, in front of him in the person of Konstantin Ustinovich was his new master. Although the “old” one was still in this world.

Bed room democrat

It is difficult to answer our question precisely, but my colleagues spoke on this topic immediately after the death of Sobchak, who passed away on a business trip near Kaliningrad. The truth is that the visiting politician was brought to his Svetlogorsk hotel room for entertainment by two local beauties. Sobchak, as they say, was not only zealous, but also the organ that supports the man in a man at any age. Sobchak had a heart condition and died from using Viagra, which was then considered a strong assistant in amorous affairs. The heart could not cope with the extra load.

(this is a continuation of the series of articles, the beginning)
Anatoly Sobchak was killed. You can read about this, in particular. In short: Sobchak died after he lay down in his hotel room to read a book and turned on the bedside lamp. Most likely, the poison was applied to the lamp - such a poisoning system is known, it was developed, in particular, by Mayranovsky in the “laboratory of poisons”. The heating of the lamp causes the substance to evaporate, the vapors of which are inhaled by the victim. Poisoning is also supported by the fact that the two guards who were on duty at Sobchak’s body were later treated for symptoms caused by poisoning.

Sobchak’s death was necessary for Putin, or rather for those who led him to the presidency. Sobchak was dragging Putin’s dirty tail of compromising evidence; by the very fact of his existence, he drew attention to what needed to be diverted from, and his death was the only possible way out of this situation.

Before his liquidation, since 1997, Putin hid Sobchak in Paris, and only on July 12, 1999, he took him to Russia - solely for the purpose of killing him so that he would “die of the heart.” After all, in Russia there are much more opportunities to suppress the investigation into this murder and attribute everything to “heart failure” than in France.

Sobchak’s death “from the heart” was a necessary link in the chain of eliminating the consequences of the enormous failure that befell the mysterious intelligence service back in 1990-1991. The failure was that Sobchak’s assistant, a certain Yuri Shutov, who was Sobchak’s “right hand” before Putin, imagined himself to be a tough counterintelligence agent and began to dig under his “patron,” and dug up a lot. In particular, he unearthed direct evidence of the connection between Sobchak and the CIA. This evidence was in the form of tapes with recordings of his communications with foreign curators. The worst thing was that Shutov partially published this incriminating evidence in his book, where he cited some dialogues from these tapes. In addition, in his book, he wrote that it would cost him his life. Neutralizing Shutov's writings required enormous efforts and resulted in a chain of murders.

Yuri Shutov became one of the first assistants to Anatoly Sobchak. He returned from Germany and spoke German at a level sufficient to work as an illegal intelligence officer, and said that he had worked in many countries, and he went there with some not entirely legal documents. But whether this “illegal immigrant from Germany” had a real connection with intelligence or the KGB is unknown.

He appeared on Sobchak’s team, most likely, on the recommendation of Khodyrev, who was once his boss and could believe that his past was not a legend. Although it looks like a strong cover story: a former minor official, who was in prison on false charges, was released, was rehabilitated, went to Germany, offended by the system... When Shutov came out of prison, Khodyrev summoned him for some reason (about which Shutov mentions in his book: " Immediately after his release from prison, his assistant Soloviev suddenly called me at home and told me that the “master” wanted to meet at any convenient time. ... inviting such a nonentity like me, who had just taken off his prisoner’s sweatshirt, to the then mayor of the city, looked quite implausible. ... my former boss Khodyrev stood up to meet me and extended his hand. Without letting go of his hand, he examined my face, probably looking for gunpowder traces of the past years: “I wanted to see you, so that you knew, I always believed in your innocence, admired your courageous behavior during the investigation and trial, but even being at that time second secretary of the city party committee, could not help you in any way, since the command to deal with you, as you know, was given by Romanov himself. After your arrest, you, Shutov, somehow disappeared and melted away for everyone. Today I want to prove that I always remembered you. ... At parting, Khodyrev told me that I could count on his help and support.").
Shutov respected Khodyrev and trusted him, which could later play a fatal role for him.

Now it is no longer known whether the revealing tapes actually existed, or whether Shutov invented quotes from these instructions, but Sobchak and Putin took such dangerous compromising evidence seriously, and they sent operatives to Shutov’s apartment, of course, in his absence. Shutov, who returned home earlier than usual, discovered not only the consequences of a hectic search, but also the operatives themselves, who, out of surprise, immediately tried to kill him with the help of a hammer and a knife that came to hand. The fighters managed quickly and retreated, leaving the victim to die in a pool of blood with a broken skull. However, the neurosurgeon on duty at the clinic of the Military Medical Academy, Dikarev Yu.V. Shutov performed an extensive craniotomy (5x7 cm in size) and he survived. Thus, on October 4, 1991, rumors about these tapes that reached Putin almost turned out to be fatal for Shutov.

After leaving the hospital in the spring of 1992, Shutov was arrested on charges of attempting to assassinate the President of Azerbaijan, shooting Lithuanian border guards, and other, apparently, the first high-profile crimes that came across, a total of 11 charges, which 4 years later the court recognized as knowingly false. In the operatives who then came to arrest him, Shutov recognized the very uninvited guests who almost killed him. The operatives were not surprised by such a quick identification, and told Shutov that he had already, in fact, died, and the delay in the funeral was a mere formality.

Their revelation was not far from the truth, and Shutov, perhaps, did not understand who he was contacting. How could he have known then that soon, unable to move independently due to a broken spine, he would be sentenced to life, and would dream of death, making one after another unsuccessful suicide attempts. If he understood who he was dealing with and what he was dooming himself to, then he was a real hero who challenged the mysterious intelligence service, which was leading its undercover gang of killer lawyers to seize power over Russia.

What can you say about him himself? Shutov Yuri Titovich, born on March 16, 1946, was apparently conceived in June of the victorious year of 1945, a month after the end of the war. If his mother painted the walls of the Reichstag on behalf of the counterintelligence SMERSH, then who could she choose as his dad is scary to think about. But outwardly, Yuri Shutov does not look like Rambo. Although, judging by the charges brought against him, this short, bald man is just some kind of Terminator. He allegedly organized almost all the high-profile murders in St. Petersburg, shot Lithuanian border guards, prepared the assassination of the President of Azerbaijan, and committed a lot of other crimes.

To tell the truth, such a wide scope of his criminal activities raises doubts not only because many of the accusations are simply absurd and not a single one of them has been proven, but also because Shutov’s case is clearly a custom case, and this case was fabricated by very biased employees of the prosecutor’s office , Valery Bolshakov and Nikolay Vinnichenko. Both of these prosecutor's employees are closely connected with the mysterious intelligence service - Bolshakov is a classmate of agent "Egorov", and Vinnichenko is a classmate of agent "Dmitry Medvedev". In the early nineties, these two, on behalf of the prosecutor’s office, supervised the “competent authorities” - Bolshakov over counterintelligence, and Vinnichenko over the implementation of state security laws. As we have long noticed, the mysterious intelligence service was very fond of keeping counterintelligence and the KGB under control in those years.

These guys kept Shutov in prison for a couple of years on obviously false charges, and then, when the case fell apart, they were released. Well, in 1994, Bolshakov was kicked out of Moscow by decree from the post of deputy city prosecutor. The reason for its removal was the situation surrounding the cutting of the Baltic Shipping Company, which, by the way, was cut by the oligarch Misha Krotov from the department of civil law.

In the same period, 1994-1995, when Valery Bolshakov was removed from office, a blow was struck at the Tambov organized crime group close to him, which was something like a power structure for the Egorov gang. In 1994, an assassination attempt was made on Kumarin, the leader of the Tambov gang, as a result of which he lost his arm and spent a month in a coma, and in 1995, almost a third of his gang was arrested. Apparently, during this period, certain forces were still working against the Putin-“Egorov” gang of killer lawyers that interfered with their activities.

So, as for Yuri Shutov and his revealing tapes. There was a real risk that rumors about this matter would reach Yeltsin himself, and he would order a deeper investigation into this matter. This was fraught with the discovery of the intelligence network of the mysterious special service, which entwined Sobchak from all sides. This was unacceptable.

At the end of the summer of 1999, a certain document surfaced entitled “Certificate regarding Putin V.V. ”, compiled, apparently, by the cops, and very quickly. Shutov’s ill-fated tapes are also mentioned in passing: “In the criminal case of investigator Vanyushin Yu.M. There are materials that, at the request of Sobchak and Putin, Shakhanov and Milin in 1991 conducted an unauthorized search of Sobchak’s former assistant Yu.T. Shutov, the purpose of the search was to seize from the latter a tape recording of Sobchak’s conversation with a resident of French intelligence. In 1992, on Shutova Yu.T. a robbery was organized, as a result of which the victim was sent to the hospital with a traumatic brain injury.”- as we see, there are a number of inaccuracies here. In fact, it was the search on October 4, 1991 that was accompanied by an attack on Shutov, while the certificate spreads these events over different years, and instead of the CIA, a certain “French intelligence” appears there. However, all these inaccuracies become clear if you pay attention to the name of the person who was assigned to conduct cases against Putin and other members of the gang of killer lawyers. This investigator for particularly important cases of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, Yuri Mikhailovich Vanyushin, is a classmate of Putin, “Egorov”, and others. Of course, he conducted all these affairs in a friendly manner, in such a way that none of them led anywhere, so he created all sorts of confusion.

What is characteristic is the traces of Vanyushin Yu.M. lost in 2005. He supposedly died. I was never able to Google the exact date of his death. There was a man, and he is no more. The death of Putin's classmate did not arouse the slightest interest from the media...

Yuri Shutov was dangerous not because of what he could do, but because of what he had already done. If he himself posed some kind of danger, then it would not be difficult to eliminate him; he was not at all bulletproof. But it was impossible to kill him, since this would only confirm that he was right. It was necessary to denigrate him to such an extent that no one would have any doubts: “Yuri Shutov is a bandit and a murderer, and all his writings are just a smokescreen for committing crimes.” So that even Yeltsin would not doubt.

Unsubstantiated accusations, even if they are expressed authoritatively, are not at all what was needed. Unsubstantiated accusations can convince the average person, but significant figures were also interested in Shutov’s case. To discredit the writings of Yuri Shutov, it was necessary to bring really weighty accusations against him, best of all - his order for at least one high-profile murder, and then the rest of the accusations would follow. The lack of evidence for the remaining charges is not so important, since the simple logic “if he is a murderer, then there are many more crimes behind him” will work.

It was impossible to take an unsolved high-profile murder and pin it on Shutov, because if the real perpetrators were found, then the whole case would fall apart. The key point of the charge should not have been someone else’s high-profile murder, but one that would have been committed under one’s own control, thereby minimizing the possibility of inconsistencies in fabricating the case.

It was better to kill the right person, and in such a way that many would be thought of, but the traces would most convincingly lead to Shutov. Therefore, the murder of Mikhail Manevich was carefully thought out and ordered.

On August 18, 1997, at 8:50 in the morning, a Volvo official car, in which there were three people - the driver, Manevich (in the front seat) and his wife (in the back seat), slowed down, leaving Rubinshteina Street (where Manevich lived) on Nevsky avenue. After this, shots were heard from the attic of the house on the opposite side (Nevsky, 76). Mikhail Manevich was wounded by five bullets in the neck and chest, and died on the way to the hospital; his wife received a slight tangential wound.

Putin feigned surprise at this murder : “Misha was an amazing guy. I feel so sorry that he was killed, such injustice! Who did he bother?.. Simply amazing. Very soft, intelligent, flexible in the good sense of the word. He was a principled person, he didn’t adapt to everyone, but he never got into trouble, he always looked for a way out, acceptable solutions. I still don't understand how this could happen. I don't understand" - well, just “crocodile tears.”

This murder was most likely planned by two agent friends, “Egorov” and Putin, as individuals who completely trusted each other and were most dedicated to the plans of bringing Putin to power over Russia. The motive for this murder was the need to frame Shutov at any cost in order to discredit his writings.

It was decided to loudly kill Mikhail Manevich, the vice-governor of St. Petersburg, in order to attribute this case to Yuri Shutov back in 1996, when Manevich had already played his role for the Egorov gang and was no longer needed. Previously, from 1993 to 1996, Manevich was chairman of the city property management committee. Thus, the criminal privatization of city property took place under his, so to speak, sensitive leadership. Manevich knew too much that it would have been better for no one to know - such knowledge for any of its owners then sharply reduced the chances of surviving until retirement.

Manevich remained steadfast, and in response to requests from the State Duma commission to assess the results of the privatization of state-owned enterprises in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, which worked from 1996 to 1999, and which was headed by Yuri Shutov, refused to provide documents. The lawyers of the “Egorov” gang taught him to answer - they say that this commission is not legitimate at all, and therefore has no right to poke its nose into the affairs of serious people who have divided up city property among themselves. Shutov tried to convince Manevich that there was no point in covering up these swindlers, and thus it turned out that Shutov and Manevich were in conflict over the refusal to submit documents to the commission. And conflict is a motive for murder! - the investigation reasoned.

True, if you follow the logic, then it was not Shutov who needed to silence Manevich forever, but, on the contrary, those into whose dark affairs Manevich was privy. Therefore, when Manevich was killed, the investigation had to work through a huge number of versions - too many people benefited from his death, and it was impossible to discard these versions without consideration.

But what ruined Manevich was not his dedication, but the fact that he did not belong either to the gang of killer lawyers “Egorov” or to the gang of Khodyrev. He “strayed” to Sobchak’s mayor’s office through Chubais, and could have been, at most, one of the junk agents through the Chubais-Gaidar curators of the VNIISI direction. If you believe the data from kompromat.ru, Putin slipped Manevich an employee of his special service as a wife, which only confirms the initial lack of trust in him on the part of the “Egorov” gang. Therefore, it was not a pity to sacrifice such a person, but a bloody sacrifice was desperately needed.

For the totality of all reasons, Manevich was chosen as a victim on the altar of the “Shutov case.” When in 1996 the Egorov gang handed the mayor's office into the hands of the Khodyrev gang, almost all the former employees of the mayor's office unanimously left their posts, having agreed on this in advance. But Manevich was specifically asked to stay - his murder was already planned, and therefore Putin advised him not to leave, convincing him that such a professional should take the position of vice-governor, even if on someone else’s team.

Khodyrev’s gang needed this Manevich like a dog’s fifth leg, but for some reason he still took the chair of vice-governor. Perhaps Khodyrev decided to help the “Egorov” gang solve delicate problems - it’s not for nothing that the mysterious special service is leading these two intelligence groups in parallel, which in public then pretended to be fighting against each other, although in fact they were playing along with each other all the time.

“Egorov” had no right to kill Khodyrev’s people, but to kill “no one’s” Manevich, who also knew too much to blame Shutov for this - this was an excellent combination, just in the characteristic style of such a great schemer as “Egorov” .

It’s hard to say who Putin ordered to kill Mikhail Manevich; he wasn’t the one sitting in the attic. Various bandits took responsibility for this murder, but the chain to the customer always ended with corpses. Putin could have ordered the murder through Roman Tsepov, but he was also liquidated in 2004 - even before the trial of Yuri Shutov took place in 2006, which sentenced him to life. By the way, the symptoms of Roman Tsepov’s death were the same as those of Alexander Litvinenko, that is, the matter here smells not just of poisoning, but of Polonium-210, and such a murder is beyond the power of ordinary bandits, this is the work of a serious intelligence service.

But, of course, no official investigator will now risk digging in Putin’s direction. But it is quite obvious that it was vitally necessary for Putin to hang a high-profile murder on Yuri Shutov, and Manevich was a suitable victim - for the new composition of the mayor’s office he was a stranger, and for the old composition he was waste material, and besides, he knew too much. And putting him in the vice-governor's chair is very similar to a special promotion for the sake of a more high-profile murder. But his murder was not at all profitable for Shutov; on the contrary, it took away from him a potential witness in the investigation of the criminal privatization of the city, but he was accused.

In 1998, Nikolai Vinnichenko, who helped Valery Bolshakov fabricate Shutov’s first case, took the position of deputy city prosecutor. It is curious that already at the end of 1999, the board of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation placed personal responsibility on Nikolai Vinnichenko for turning St. Petersburg into a criminal capital, noting that the increase in especially serious crimes under his supervision in 1999 was 64%, which was the highest figure in the country. Every third case of kidnapping was not solved, and every third case of banditry was returned by the courts for further investigation. But Putin came to power, and in 2003 Nikolai Vinnichenko became the city prosecutor.

Well, then, in 1999, when discrediting Shutov was a matter of life and death for the Putin-“Egorov” gang, Shutov’s imprisonment was staged as a whole performance. At first, Shutov was seemingly released, released right in the courtroom, however, after 3 minutes, masked special forces burst into the court, beat Shutov, broke his spine, and took him away. After some time, Vinnichenko took responsibility for this raid. This whole picture was intended to present Shutov as such a terrible monster, from whom everything was seized in court, and only the brave heroes from Putin’s gang were able to cope with him, although not entirely by legal means. Although, as we already know, it was Putin’s “Egorov” gang that had everything seized, they had their own investigators, judges, prosecutors everywhere, and Shutov acted almost alone.

And when, a couple of months after this show, Anatoly Sobchak died “from the heart,” then there was a moral justification for keeping Shutov in prison without trial - supposedly it was he, Shutov, who drove Sobchak from the world, hounding him with his disgusting compromising evidence, with whose help he created a smokescreen for his own crimes. And nothing, people grabbed it...
..to be continued, of course...

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A horse dose of Viagra killed the stallion Anatoly Sobchak. But what does Putin have to do with it?

Anatoly Sobchak, according to the official version, died of coronary heart disease, complicated by acute coronary insufficiency. But according to the results of the autopsy, it turned out that the deceased’s body contained alcohol and a medication that acts on potency in a triple dose.
A few hours before his death, Anatoly Sobchak and Kaliningrad ex-governor Leonid Gorbenko visited a bathhouse, where they drank a lot. And about forty minutes after returning to the hotel, Sobchak became ill and died. At the scene of the incident, the police found two ladies, one of whom called for help.
The same version of the reasons for the death of Anatoly Sobchak was confirmed by Alexander Korzhakov, head of security for President Boris Yeltsin. According to him, two local beauties were brought to the hotel room to entertain the St. Petersburg guest. By the way, the girls were brought by the leader of the Solntsevskaya organized crime group, Shabtai Kalmanovich.
Viagra, which he took to show himself a master not only in politics, but also in amorous affairs, did not help, but failed.
The heart could not cope with the extra load.

Sobchak did not die of a heart attack, but was poisoned on Putin’s orders

The “political father” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Anatoly Sobchak, was poisoned using poison on the night light at his bedside.
The French portal Slate, in an article entitled “Putin’s mentor Anatoly Sobtchak was poisoned (Anatoly Sobtchak, le mentor de Poutine, aurait été empoisonné),” actually accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of murdering the mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, writes Gordon.
“In her recently published book “The Man Without a Face: The Incredible Rise of Vladimir Putin,” Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, according to a Reuters review, points out that Putin’s “political father” Sobchak was poisoned by poison on the night light at his bedside.
Putin became assistant to Mayor Sobchak in 1990. Responsible for the city's international relations, he organized a system for exporting materials from the former USSR to Germany in exchange for food aid, which never reached the city. As a result of this operation, according to the journalist, $92 million disappeared without a trace.
After Russian justice accused him of stealing money, Sobchak took refuge in Paris from 1997 to 1999. He waited for Putin to become powerful enough on the Russian political scene to be able to return to the country, which happened in June 1999.
From that time on, Sobchak began to fiercely support Putin, who, having taken the post of prime minister, set a course to succeed Boris Yeltsin as president.
However, on February 20, 2000, Sobchak was found dead in a hotel. Officially, he died of a heart attack. At the funeral, Putin said that “this is not just a death, it is a violent death caused by persecution” (allegedly from unrest due to “false accusations” against him).
The story would have ended there if journalist Arkady Vaksberg had not investigated this death. He collected material indicating that it was a murder and not a natural death.
The two guards who were on duty at the body were subsequently treated for symptoms similar to those that occur during poisoning. Two autopsies were performed. The public was not informed about their results. Shortly after the book explaining the suspicions was published, Vaksberg's car exploded.
Vaksberg, who lived in Paris (died on May 10, 2011 after a serious illness), reported on February 10, 2010 about the murder of Sobchak by Putin in an interview with Radio Liberty.
“There is a lot of uncertainty in the circumstances of Sobchak’s death; it was reported, for example, that there were two other people in the hotel room. They said that Sobchak was accompanied on the trip by Kalmanovich, a well-known businessman associated with the special services and criminal circles (in June 2009, Kalmanovich was killed in Moscow),” he said.
Vaksberg knew Sobchak well. In his book “Laboratory of Poisons,” published in French, he writes about the mystery of the death of the former mayor of St. Petersburg. According to the writer, there are many circumstances indicating that this is a political murder related to the 2000 presidential election campaign.”
Fearing that Putin would kill him too, Vaksberg very carefully told Svoboda:
“In the book I made a pretty clear case that it was a murder. There is no direct evidence, but in our country it is customary to consider only direct evidence as evidence in public opinion, which categorically contradicts the theory of forensic evidence and the theory of criminology in general.
The totality of circumstantial evidence is also conclusive if one link is connected to another, just like direct evidence. Otherwise, the criminals could not have been tried; 90% of the criminals, as Kony said, would then have escaped the answer if the circumstantial evidence did not have the same evidentiary power.
I’m just careful (not out of any fear, but simply for the sake of accuracy and fidelity to forensic science) to make assumptions about who exactly could have been the customer and the performer. But I don’t doubt it for a minute that this is not an accidental death or a death from heart failure.
I'm not at all sure that he had severe heart disease, as was imagined. This severe heart disease was invented in order to save him from the persecution to which he was subjected in St. Petersburg, it was a reason to evacuate him, to save him from his pursuers. I saw no signs that he was being treated for heart disease in Paris. We saw each other very often, there were no breaks, and I did not see the treatment process.
Circumstantial evidence is a whole chain of evidence. Suffice it to say that there was a categorical refusal to re-examine. And the incredible mystery surrounding his death and the reasons for his death also speaks volumes. Why should such mystery surround this death?
If there is even the slightest doubt, all conceivable and inconceivable research must be carried out in order to refute any suspicions. This haste to complete the study makes me think that something is not quite normal there. And immediately it stopped; there are no more conversations on this topic.
Since 1935, the “laboratory of poisons” has been developing a poisoning system that would not be poison in the literal sense of the word, that is, poisoning through the air. And this coincides with what the notorious Mairanovsky, the head of that old “laboratory of poisons,” reported to Beria at one time.
The poison could have been applied to an electric lamp. This poisoning system was developed in a “poisons laboratory.” This is the latest innovation, an invention during the lifetime of Mairanovsky, the main monster of this “laboratory of poisons”, who is responsible for all kinds of political murders.
And he developed this system: his letter to Beria was published, where he said that the prospect of further developments is to move away from poisons that are taken in the form of pills, or powders, or injections, or injections, and move on to this system poisoning, because it is more effective, leaves significantly fewer traces, and perhaps none at all.
It is known how bad Anatoly Alexandrovich felt, it is known that he was lying and reading, the bedside table lamp was on. All this together led me to this kind of version.
It only amazes me that versions, if they exist, are not checked, that it is preferable to put an end to the official version and never return to it. I pursued this goal when I talked about it.”

The last witness to Sobchak's death was shot dead

Investigators have finally found out that the attack on the former deputy director of the Financial Leasing Company (FLK) Andrei Burlakov was not an attempt to scare the businessman, but a well-planned murder.
Investigators finally found out that the attack on the former deputy director of the Financial Leasing Company (FLK), Andrei Burlakov, was not an attempt to scare the businessman, but was a well-planned murder: the killer fired from a combat pistol and aimed at the victims’ heads. Detectives are looking for motives for the crime both in Burlakov’s past - Andrei, along with his friend Shabtai Kalmanovich, was present at the death of Anatoly Sobchak, and in his current conflicts - Burlakov believed that he was deceived of tens of millions of dollars by several business partners.
Last night, Andrei Burlakov and his common-law wife, ex-deputy chairman of the board of Mira Bank Anna Etkina, had a meeting scheduled with TV journalist Maxim Gladky. The correspondent is now preparing a story about Shabtai Kalmanovich (killed in Moscow in November 2009), with whom Burlakov was friends and led several joint business projects. At around 17:00 they gathered at the Khutorok cafe on Leningradsky Prospekt, sat down at one of the tables and started talking. Almost immediately a young man with a small beard came to the cafe. He twirled around in the hall for a while and then headed to the toilet. The unknown person came out with a pistol in his hand. He approached a table where a couple of businessmen and a journalist were sitting and opened fire. Burlakov was hit in the head, chest and shoulder. Anna Etkina was wounded in the face and her jaw was crushed. The bullet ricocheted into the woman's chest. The criminal did not touch the journalist and quickly walked away from the cafe.

Burlakov died in the ambulance. Two days before the attack, he left the hospital where he had undergone coronary bypass surgery. The businessman’s heart could not bear what happened and stopped. Etkina is in intensive care in serious condition. However, doctors do not fear for her life.
Five 7.65mm shell casings marked S&D were found at the crime scene. The killer used a pistol, which, according to experts, is an outdated model and has been discontinued.
Andrei Burlakov at one time graduated from the Red Banner Institute of Military Translators, mastered the Japanese language perfectly and became an employee of one of the intelligence agencies of the USSR. He worked under diplomatic cover in Tokyo for a long time. According to one of Burlakov’s acquaintances, in the 1980s and 1990s he became close friends with businessman Shabtai Kalmanovich. Also an intelligence officer who served time in Israel for spying for the USSR. Whether they agreed on the basis of working for special services or joint business projects, history is silent. But Burlakov and Kalmanovich became close friends and business partners. According to the agency’s interlocutor, at one time Shabtai introduced Andrei to the mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. Kalmanovich was friendly with the mayor, and in 1995 his company Liat-Dixie received several sites in the Northern capital for the construction of hypermarkets, as well as a large shopping center. The agency's source assures that Burlakov also took part in all these projects.
In February 2000, Anatoly Sobchak, at the invitation of Kalmanovich and Burlakov, went to the city of Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region. Businessmen there were implementing a project to create a free economic trade zone. Suddenly, the former mayor became ill in the hotel. A Rosbalt source assures that Andrei and Shabtai immediately came to Sobchak’s room. Later, in an interview, Kalmanovich admitted that Sobchak died in his arms.
According to the official version, the former head of the Northern capital died of a heart attack. However, even then, many of Rosbalt’s interlocutors in different circles, including among former intelligence officers, doubted Sobchak’s natural death, pointing out that Shabtai allegedly had something to do with what happened.
When Kalmanovich was shot in Moscow in November 2009, one of the former representatives of the special services directly told Rosbalt: “They reminded him of Sobchak.” And now the killers have dealt with another person who was present at the death of the ex-mayor of St. Petersburg.
However, another close acquaintance of Burlakov told Rosbalt that he had never heard from Andrei about his acquaintance with Sobchak; he considers what happened to be the result of the businessman’s latest conflicts related to his work at the Financial Leasing Company, where he held the position of deputy director.
FLC was created back in 1997, four years later it won the tender of the Russian government to receive state support for leasing programs in the field of civil aviation. In September 2002, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed a decree on the acquisition of 58% of the shares of FLC into the ownership of the Russian Federation; it later became part of the state-owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC).
The company regularly received government funds for various aviation-related projects. In 2007, FLC issued bonds worth $250 million, which were bought by the largest Western banks - ING, Credit Suisse, Deutshe Bank, UBS. However, in 2008, the company declared a technical default because it was unable to pay the bond issue coupons, and found itself on the brink of bankruptcy.
Law enforcement agencies became interested in this whole situation and opened a case of fraud. According to operatives, in the same 2007, the management of FLC unexpectedly decided to issue loans on preferential terms for 2.7 billion rubles to two companies - IK YUG and Investment Leasing Company.
Former top managers of Mira Bank took part in the transaction (the Central Bank revoked its license in 2008), and the money, according to operatives, went to the accounts of the Luxembourg FLC West Holding. This company was once created as a “daughter” of the Russian FLK, and its general director was Andrei Burlakov.
Using funds earmarked for Russian aircraft manufacturing, FLC West Holding purchased shipyards in Germany and Ukraine from the Norwegian company Aker Yards. On the basis of these assets, acquired for almost 300 million euros, the company Wadan Yards was created, in which Andrei Burlakov took the post of chairman of the board of directors, and the former deputy chairman of the board of Mira Bank, Anka Etkina, became vice president for finance. In fact, they became the owners of shipyards purchased with government funds.
However, quite quickly the shipyards found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy.
The situation was aggravated by the global financial crisis. The German authorities were forced to provide Wadan Yards with a loan of 60 million euros, and German banks provided loans for another 150 million euros to the company with Russian owners. But this did not save the situation: in the summer of 2009, shipyard workers held a rally in the city of Wismar, since they could lose their jobs at any time. The situation has become an international scandal. According to German media reports, in July 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, raised the topic of the future fate of the shipyards.
Andrei Burlakov left FLS back in November 2008, and a year later the Main Investigation Department of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate put him and Etkin on the wanted list on charges of fraud. The couple was arrested in December 2009. In the summer of 2010, the court agreed to release Etkina on bail of 5 million rubles, and Burlakov on bail of 50 million rubles. We managed to collect the required amount for the woman quickly. Burlakov had to look for money for a long time, as a result, he mortgaged his expensive apartment in a prestigious building to one of the banks. By the way, the owner of this bank is now himself in custody.
While Burlakov was in pre-trial detention, the shipyard was bought by the Swiss company Nordic Yards, controlled by Vitaly Yusufov (later Yusufov pledged this asset to purchase shares in the Bank of Moscow).
According to a friend of the murdered businessman, at that moment these businessmen were friendly, but after Burlakov’s release their relationship deteriorated sharply. So did his relationships with a number of other business partners. “There were certain agreements, the details of which I will not specify,” said the agency’s interlocutor. “However, all of them were completely violated by Andrei’s former acquaintances; he believed that he had been deceived for a very significant amount. Being a tough man, he very persistently demanded to return what was his. By the way, on the day of Andrei’s murder it became known that Vitaly Yusufov sold his stake in the Bank of Moscow to VTB.”
A Rosbalt source said that before Burlakov’s arrest, he was always accompanied by five bodyguards, but after leaving the pre-trial detention center, he refused the security services. “Andrei believed that since everything was taken away from him, they wouldn’t kill him. They say that you don’t get shot for trying to return something stolen. He was seriously mistaken,” believes Rosbalt’s interlocutor.

They lied twice about the true cause of Sobchak's death

Sobchak died on the night of February 20. And on May 6, a criminal case was opened “in connection with the death”: one of the Kaliningrad newspapers stated that, to put it mildly, the St. Petersburg politician was helped to die. Rumors spread. They said, in particular, that the former mayor of St. Petersburg died from a drug incompatible with high alcohol levels: the day before, Sobchak drank with the governor of the Kaliningrad region at the Rus Hotel.
That Sobchak spent the last hours of his life with a free-spirited girl, a local beauty. Finally, that his body was opened twice - in Kaliningrad and at the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy, and the results of the examinations turned out to be different. The other day, the criminal case “into the death of Sobchak” was closed - “for lack of corpus delicti.” However, the events around Aman Tuleyev, the threat of an assassination attempt on the Kemerovo governor add color to everything that is happening... But was it worth disturbing the ashes of Anatoly Alexandrovich? - we were surprised and went to Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg.
“The organs were in perfect order, but there was a terrible smell of alcohol.”
We drove to the resort town of Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region, along the same neat German autobahn along which Anatoly Sobchak made his last journey. The fashionable hotel "Rus" stands as if nothing had happened - 50 meters from the Baltic Sea, 4 stars and a large list of honored guests - Kirkorov, Makarevich... On the night when it became known about the death of the famous guest, the hotel building was cordoned off, and the staff forbidden to open your mouth. The autopsy in the Kaliningrad morgue was carried out under heavy police guard, then in great haste the body was transported to St. Petersburg, and the results of the forensic medical examination have still not been shown to anyone except the wife of the deceased and the presidential administration. And, as you know, there is no smoke without fire.
As it turned out, the doctors had something to hide. For the first time, the newspaper “New Wheels” started talking about this, where we headed when we arrived in Kaliningrad. It was on the pages of “New Wheels” that a message appeared that, firstly, Sobchak, in a state of severe alcoholic intoxication, spent that night with a girl of easy virtue, and secondly, that the St. Petersburg politician did not die from a heart attack and he could have been saved , have a doctor on hand. The scandalous article with which Sobchak’s second “funeral” began was called “Love to the grave.” The author, who is also the editor of the newspaper, Igor Rudnikov, claimed that he had evidence of both hypotheses.
Rudnikov explained the appearance of the publication by saying that he was greatly puzzled by the atmosphere of secrecy that had developed around the death of the distinguished guest and the rumors spreading throughout the city. But the television appearance of Sobchak’s attending physician, the current Minister of Health and Putin’s personal friend Yuri Shevchenko, added fuel to the fire. He stated that Sobchak died of a fourth heart attack, as he had recently been walking on the edge of an abyss. Death in the Svetlogorsk hotel was presented as a logical result of the persecution inflicted on him in St. Petersburg by Governor Yakovlev. But the editor of the Kaliningrad newspaper had completely different information.
“For obvious reasons, I cannot name my sources - otherwise they will lose their jobs,” he told us. - But I saw with my own eyes the conclusion of a forensic medical examination, which said that Sobchak died of acute coronary insufficiency. As the experts explained to me, it was a blood clot, the consequences of which could have been eliminated very easily if an ambulance had appeared immediately. But she was not called before the arrival of Governor Leonid Gorbenko. And the doctors who opened Sobchak’s body and held his heart in their hands confirmed to me that there was not a single scar on him that would form in the event of a heart attack. No one! What can we say about the fourth. They noted that his internal organs were in excellent condition and that there was a terrible smell of alcohol inside. So why did you have to lie?
They learned about Igor Rudnikov’s discoveries in Moscow, and then a call rang in his editorial office: the caller introduced himself as TV presenter Andrei Karaulov.
“He started from above,” Rudnikov continues his story, “he said: “Boy, do you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into? Yes, they can knock your head off for these things! I can save you, provide protection. There is an option: you take all your materials, get on a plane, fly to Moscow, and the whole country will know about you.” Our dialogue ended in nothing, since I refused such “help”, and Karaulov made his program himself.
Sobchak's death turned out to be beneficial for many: in St. Petersburg they used this to fight Governor Yakovlev - then elections were just around the corner, and in Kaliningrad Rudnikov used this fact to fight Governor Gorbenko. Who, if not the governor, should be blamed for making the guest drunk and sneaking in an overly gambling girl? If she was, of course.
Gorbenko realized who the hole was being dug for, and immediately wrote a statement to the prosecutor’s office demanding that a criminal case be opened for libel. There is one important circumstance here: “New Wheels” live by criticizing Governor Gorbenko. As a souvenir, the editor of the newspaper gave us an anniversary issue entitled “The History of One Governor” - a 48-page compromising dossier collected over many years by Rudnikov. The editor paid for this intelligence activity and for the fact that a couple of years ago he ran for mayor of the city: on the eve of the elections in 1998, he was met at the entrance and his skull was broken with a wrench. It was then that he ended up in the Kaliningrad emergency hospital, where a conclusion about the nature of the head injury was made by the same forensic expert who, some time later, was on the team of 4 people who opened Sobchak. Most likely, it was from this old acquaintance that editor Rudnikov received sensational information.
“He did not see any scars from heart attacks on Sobchak’s heart”
Hoping to find out from other sources whether there were scars from heart attacks on Sobchak’s heart, and to find confirmation of the “New Wheels” version, we went to the Kaliningrad Bureau of Forensic Medicine. However, in a conversation with us, Fyodor Zhitnikov, deputy head of the bureau, stubbornly dismissed the authorship of the information leak.
- We are strictly prohibited from showing any documents on this case! Not a single piece of paper - not even a journal entry about the acceptance of the corpse,” he told us.
At this time, a cheerful guy Max in a blood-stained apron jumped out of the rickety morgue building, emitting a rotten fishy smell - the body of Anatoly Sobchak was brought into these iron doors on the night of February 20th.
“It wasn’t my shift then,” Max recalls, “but the next morning I came to clean up the traces: on the “flagship” table (that’s what we call the middle of the three tables on which we dissect corpses), a sheet and a pillow remained from the night autopsy, on which Sobchak was lying . I threw them in the trash. But he kept Sobchak’s Versace underwear for himself: he put it in a bag and hid it in the closet. But when I returned from vacation some time later, I didn’t find them there: they had been stolen. I was hoping to make a fortune from them in my old age - I would sell them at auction...
Max spread his hands. He knew nothing more about that night. But we accidentally met a general practitioner who came to this morgue to visit his friends. It was he who put the finishing touches on our doubts. Dr. Gennady Siltsov (name and surname have been changed because he faces dismissal from his job for disclosing the secret) turned out to be a close friend of the deputy head of the thanatology department, who supervised Sobchak’s autopsy.
“That night I was here early in the morning - at five o’clock,” recalls Siltsov. - My patient died the day before, and I came to him. I walked inside the morgue and suddenly I saw Sobchak lying there. I recognized him immediately, as I had always admired him. (Although early in the morning his death was not yet known.) He looked magnificent (here his face reflected sincere admiration for the state of the dead body, which was difficult for us, who do not communicate with the dead very often, to share). It seemed that Sobchak simply fell asleep; there were no traces of blood or injuries on him. And already in the afternoon I got into a conversation with my friend who supervised the autopsy. So he told me that it was just heart failure: he didn’t see a single heart attack scar on Sobchak’s heart!
So that's why they opened a case! It turns out that they lied about the true cause of Sobchak’s death twice: the first time - immediately after his death, the second - after the “closure” of the murder case. The Kaliningrad prosecutor's office knew the truth from the very beginning, but they are still silent.
“A murder case had to be opened to verify the arguments presented in “New Wheels”: if we are talking about the death of a person, then only one article is suitable here - 105, part I (murder), - the investigator who closed this case cooled our ardor, Nikolay Yakovlev. - We verified the hot facts about the girl allegedly present there by interviewing once again the witnesses who were with Sobchak at the hotel: those accompanying him (several St. Petersburg businessmen) and all the staff, especially the duty administrator Kalmykova. But they didn’t remember anything new.
“They came to me and told me to keep quiet”
Based on these surveys, the prosecutor's office came to the conclusion that the newspaper version about the girl of easy virtue was not proven. And they decided not to check the version that Sobchak did not die from a heart attack at all. The fact is that when a medical report was required for a criminal case, they naturally did not pull Sobchak out of the ground and simply rewrote the act drawn up that very night.
Okay, exhumation is none of our business. But we can try to find the girl...
We managed to find out that this girl supposedly worked as a stripper in the Tete-a-Tete bar in the center of Kaliningrad, where we went straight from the morgue. However, Sergei Shamanov, the director of the bar, made surprised eyes.
“I keep an eye on my girls, I don’t allow them to go outside,” he said.
But after three hours of conversation and watching striptease together, I suddenly remembered:
- Well, of course! In the same house, above our heads, on the 11th floor, a girl named Vika, my good friend, is now sitting. The day after Sobchak’s death, when the whole city was talking about it, she told me that she saw him that night.
Vika is a young woman, 25 years old, lives alone with her child. Her apartment is indeed right above the Tête-à-Tête bar. Knowing many of the city’s “party bosses,” Victoria often graced their gatherings with her company. So that night she found herself on the ship “Chebotarev”, on the deck of which there is a small cozy establishment with a couple of tables - only for her own people. Governor Gorbenko and Anatoly Sobchak were among those that evening.
“I was sitting at the next table with my friend,” Vika said. - Sobchak was already very drunk (the official version of forensic experts: no alcohol was found in Sobchak’s blood. - Author). But there seemed to be no women with them. Then they left, and the next day they came to me and told me to keep quiet. I don’t know what happened next.
And then there was the Rus Hotel and a naked dead man in a room on the second floor. And even further - the story that they helped the famous Sobchak die.

Why did Andrei Karaulov need to shout: “They killed Sobchak”?

“There was no autopsy of Sobchak at the Military Medical Academy. That's for sure. Sobchak, after he was brought from Kaliningrad, was actually in our refrigerator, we did his makeup before the burial. But other than that, nothing!” - this is how an employee of St. Petersburg morgue No. 2 on Zagorodny Prospekt, the forensic medical examination unit of the Military Medical Academy, answered the question of an Interlocutor correspondent. The speaker made it clear that he was directly related to the circumstances of the stay of the body of the ex-mayor of St. Petersburg on Zagorodny. At the end of the conversation, the forensic expert added: “You can consider this our official answer. We didn’t cut Anatoly Alexandrovich a second time.”
The version of a re-autopsy that supposedly revealed in Sobchak’s blood “an unacceptable combination of a drink containing alcohol and specific medications” was voiced at the end of July by the host of the TV show “Moment of Truth” Andrei Karaulov. In one of his interviews, a popular journalist said that Sobchak’s wife, Lyudmila Narusova, insisted on a repeat autopsy. Narusova herself did not comment on this. Strange silence - given the fact that immediately after Sobchak’s death she publicly promised to name her husband’s killers. And then another person calls them, or almost calls them. A pill thrown into a glass of wine - this is how the accusation ends up sounding.
Why did Karaulov speak? There are several versions on this matter. The first, and, naturally, I want to believe in it most of all, is that the journalist really made the blatant facts public. Other explanations that suggest themselves are more dramatic. It is known that the relationship between Karaulov and Sobchak has always, to put it mildly, left much to be desired. The mayor pointedly avoided Karaulov, who, in turn, actively participated in the gubernatorial elections of Vladimir Yakovlev. A conflict situation, as they say, took place. The old hostility, like a relapse, seemed to make itself felt several years later.
It is also interesting that at one time the presenter of the “Moment of Truth” served not only the elections of the governor of St. Petersburg, but also more than once the elections of heads of other regions.
“It is possible that in Kaliningrad Karaulov had just such a “moment of truth”: speaking about Sobchak’s death, he actually joined someone’s election campaign,” the chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party told the Interlocutor correspondent. and the former assistant of the murdered Galina Starovoytova, Ruslan Linkov.

TOP SECRET

Polina Ivmnushkina

That Sobchak spent the last hours of his life with a free-spirited girl, a local beauty. Finally, that his body was opened twice - in Kaliningrad and at the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy, and the results of the examinations turned out to be different. The other day, the criminal case “into the death of Sobchak” was closed - “for lack of corpus delicti.” However, the events around Aman Tuleyev, the threat of an assassination attempt on the Kemerovo governor add color to everything that is happening... But was it worth disturbing the ashes of Anatoly
Alexandrovich? - we were surprised and went to Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg.

“The organs were in perfect order, but there was a terrible smell of alcohol.”

We drove to the resort town of Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region, along the same neat German autobahn along which Anatoly Sobchak made his last journey. The fashionable hotel "Rus" stands as if nothing had happened - 50 meters from the Baltic Sea, 4 stars and a large list of honored guests - Kirkorov, Makarevich... On the night when it became known about the death of the famous guest, the hotel building was cordoned off, and the staff forbidden to open your mouth. The autopsy in the Kaliningrad morgue was carried out under heavy police guard, then in great haste the body was transported to St. Petersburg, and the results of the forensic medical examination have still not been shown to anyone except the wife of the deceased and the presidential administration. And, as you know, there is no smoke without fire.

As it turned out, the doctors had something to hide. For the first time, the newspaper “New Wheels” started talking about this, where we headed when we arrived in Kaliningrad. It was on the pages of “New Wheels” that a message appeared that, firstly, Sobchak, in a state of severe alcoholic intoxication, spent that night with a girl of easy virtue, and secondly, that the St. Petersburg politician did not die from a heart attack and he could have been saved , have a doctor on hand. The scandalous article with which Sobchak’s second “funeral” began was called “Love to the grave.” The author, who is also the editor of the newspaper, Igor Rudnikov, claimed that he had evidence of both hypotheses.

Rudnikov explained the appearance of the publication by saying that he was greatly puzzled by the atmosphere of secrecy that had developed around the death of the distinguished guest and the rumors spreading throughout the city. But the television appearance of Sobchak’s attending physician, the current Minister of Health and Putin’s personal friend Yuri Shevchenko, added fuel to the fire. He stated that Sobchak died of a fourth heart attack, as he had recently been walking on the edge of an abyss. Death in the Svetlogorsk hotel was presented as a logical result of the persecution inflicted on him in St. Petersburg by Governor Yakovlev. But the editor of the Kaliningrad newspaper had completely different information.

For obvious reasons, I cannot name my sources - otherwise they will lose their jobs,” he told us. - But I saw with my own eyes the conclusion of a forensic medical examination, which said that Sobchak died of acute coronary insufficiency. As the experts explained to me, it was a blood clot, the consequences of which could have been eliminated very easily if an ambulance had appeared immediately. But she was not called before the arrival of Governor Leonid Gorbenko. And the doctors who opened Sobchak’s body and held his heart in their hands confirmed to me that there was not a single scar on him that would form in the event of a heart attack. No one! What can we say about the fourth. They noted that his internal organs were in excellent condition and that there was a terrible smell of alcohol inside. So why did you have to lie?

They learned about Igor Rudnikov’s discoveries in Moscow, and then a call rang in his editorial office: the caller introduced himself as TV presenter Andrei Karaulov.

“He started from above,” Rudnikov continues his story, “he said: “Boy, do you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into? Yes, they can knock your head off for these things! I can save you, provide protection. There is an option: you take all your materials, get on a plane, fly to Moscow, and the whole country will know about you.” Our dialogue ended in nothing, since I refused such “help”, and Karaulov made his program himself.

Sobchak's death turned out to be beneficial for many: in St. Petersburg they used this to fight Governor Yakovlev - then elections were just around the corner, and in Kaliningrad Rudnikov used this fact to fight Governor Gorbenko. Who, if not the governor, should be blamed for making the guest drunk and sneaking in an overly gambling girl? If she was, of course.

Gorbenko realized who the hole was being dug for, and immediately wrote a statement to the prosecutor’s office demanding that a criminal case be opened for libel. There is one important circumstance here: “New Wheels” live by criticizing Governor Gorbenko. As a souvenir, the editor of the newspaper gave us an anniversary issue entitled “The History of One Governor” - a 48-page compromising dossier collected over many years by Rudnikov. The editor paid for this intelligence activity and for the fact that a couple of years ago he ran for mayor of the city: on the eve of the elections in 1998, he was met at the entrance and his skull was broken with a wrench. It was then that he ended up in the Kaliningrad emergency hospital, where a conclusion about the nature of the head injury was made by the same forensic expert who, some time later, was on the team of 4 people who opened Sobchak. Most likely, it was from this old acquaintance that editor Rudnikov received sensational information.

“He did not see any scars from heart attacks on Sobchak’s heart”

Hoping to find out from other sources whether there were scars from heart attacks on Sobchak’s heart, and to find confirmation of the “New Wheels” version, we went to the Kaliningrad Bureau of Forensic Medicine. However, in a conversation with us, Fyodor Zhitnikov, deputy head of the bureau, stubbornly dismissed the authorship of the information leak.

We are strictly prohibited from showing any documents related to this case! Not a single piece of paper - not even a journal entry about the acceptance of the corpse,” he told us.

At this time, a cheerful guy Max in a blood-stained apron jumped out of the rickety morgue building, emitting a rotten fishy smell - the body of Anatoly Sobchak was brought into these iron doors on the night of February 20th.

It wasn’t my shift then,” Max recalls, “but the next morning I came to clean up the traces: on the “flagship” table (that’s what we call the middle of the three tables on which we dissect corpses), a sheet and pillow remained from the night autopsy, on which Sobchak was lying. I threw them in the trash. But he kept Sobchak’s Versace underwear for himself: he put it in a bag and hid it in the closet. But when I returned from vacation some time later, I didn’t find them there: they had been stolen. I was hoping to make a fortune from them in my old age - I would sell them at auction...

Max spread his hands. He knew nothing more about that night. But we accidentally met a general practitioner who came to this morgue to visit his friends. It was he who put the finishing touches on our doubts. Dr. Gennady Siltsov (name and surname have been changed because he faces dismissal from his job for disclosing the secret) turned out to be a close friend of the deputy head of the thanatology department, who supervised Sobchak’s autopsy.

That night I was here early in the morning - at five o’clock,” recalls Siltsov. - My patient died the day before, and I came to him. I walked inside the morgue and suddenly I saw Sobchak lying there. I recognized him immediately, as I had always admired him. (Although early in the morning his death was not yet known.) He looked magnificent (here his face reflected sincere admiration for the state of the dead body, which was difficult for us, who do not communicate with the dead very often, to share). It seemed that Sobchak simply fell asleep; there were no traces of blood or injuries on him. And already in the afternoon I got into a conversation with my friend who supervised the autopsy. So he told me that it was just heart failure: he didn’t see a single heart attack scar on Sobchak’s heart!

So that's why they opened a case! It turns out that they lied about the true cause of Sobchak’s death twice: the first time - immediately after his death, the second - after the “closure” of the murder case. The Kaliningrad prosecutor's office knew the truth from the very beginning, but they are still silent.

A murder case had to be opened to verify the arguments presented in “New Wheels”: if we are talking about the death of a person, then only one article is suitable - 105, part I (murder), - the investigator who closed this case, Nikolai, cooled our ardor Yakovlev. - We verified the hot facts about the girl allegedly present there by interviewing once again the witnesses who were with Sobchak at the hotel: those accompanying him (several St. Petersburg businessmen) and all the staff, especially the duty administrator Kalmykova. But they didn’t remember anything new.

“They came to me and told me to keep quiet”

Based on these surveys, the prosecutor's office came to the conclusion that the newspaper version about the girl of easy virtue was not proven. And they decided not to check the version that Sobchak did not die from a heart attack at all. The fact is that when a medical report was required for a criminal case, they naturally did not pull Sobchak out of the ground and simply rewrote the act drawn up that very night.

Okay, exhumation is none of our business. But we can try to find the girl...

We managed to find out that this girl supposedly worked as a stripper in the Tete-a-Tete bar in the center of Kaliningrad, where we went straight from the morgue. However, Sergei Shamanov, the director of the bar, made surprised eyes.

“I keep an eye on my girls and don’t allow them to go outside,” he said.

But after three hours of conversation and watching striptease together, I suddenly remembered:

Well, of course! In the same house, above our heads, on the 11th floor, a girl named Vika, my good friend, is now sitting. The day after Sobchak’s death, when the whole city was talking about it, she told me that she saw him that night.

Vika is a young woman, 25 years old, lives alone with her child. Her apartment is indeed right above the Tête-à-Tête bar. Knowing many of the city’s “party bosses,” Victoria often graced their gatherings with her company. So that night she found herself on the ship “Chebotarev”, on the deck of which there is a small cozy establishment with a couple of tables - only for her own people. Governor Gorbenko and Anatoly Sobchak were among those that evening.

“I was sitting at the next table with my friend,” Vika said. - Sobchak was already very drunk (the official version of forensic experts: no alcohol was found in Sobchak’s blood. - Author). But there seemed to be no women with them. Then they left, and the next day they came to me and told me to keep quiet. I don’t know what happened next.

Why did Andrei Karaulov need to shout: “They killed Sobchak”?

Vladimir Kozhemyakin

The version of a re-autopsy that supposedly revealed in Sobchak’s blood “an unacceptable combination of a drink containing alcohol and specific medications” was voiced at the end of July by the host of the TV show “Moment of Truth” Andrei Karaulov. In one of his interviews, a popular journalist said that Sobchak’s wife, Lyudmila Narusova, insisted on a repeat autopsy. Narusova herself did not comment on this. Strange silence - given the fact that immediately after Sobchak’s death she publicly promised to name her husband’s killers. And then another person calls them, or almost calls them. A pill thrown into a glass of wine - this is how the accusation ends up sounding.

Why did Karaulov speak? There are several versions on this matter. The first, and, naturally, I want to believe in it most of all, is that the journalist really made the blatant facts public. Other explanations that suggest themselves are more dramatic. It is known that the relationship between Karaulov and Sobchak has always, to put it mildly, left much to be desired. The mayor pointedly avoided Karaulov, who, in turn, actively participated in the gubernatorial elections of Vladimir Yakovlev. A conflict situation, as they say, took place. The old hostility, like a relapse, seemed to make itself felt several years later.

It is also interesting that at one time the presenter of the “Moment of Truth” served not only the elections of the governor of St. Petersburg, but also more than once the elections of heads of other regions.

It is possible that in Kaliningrad Karaulov had just such a “moment of truth”: speaking about Sobchak’s death, he actually joined someone’s election campaign, the chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party told the Sobesednik correspondent and former assistant of the murdered Galina Starovoytova Ruslan Linkov.