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2025-02-15 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Like Father, Like Son: Granddaughter Who Killed Grandfather Acted in the Spirit of the Tarkhov Family
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] The number one crime news of February was the brutal murder in Samara, where the former mayor of the city, Viktor Tarkhov, and his wife were dismembered by their own granddaughter, Ekaterina. But this tragedy had a long backstory: Ekaterina's father and mother were also hardened criminals.
A 30-year-long family gangster saga ends in a bloody finale. If this material fell into the hands of a talented screenwriter and director, the final product would be something between "The Brigade" and "The Silence of the Lambs."
"RED DIRECTOR"
Viktor Aleksandrovich Tarkhov, whose life was tragically cut short some time ago (not yet established by the investigation), was well known to the residents of Samara. Here, in the then Soviet Kuibyshev, he was born. Here, as they say, he had a long career. Here, from 2006 to 2010, he held the post of mayor. And here he met his terrible death.
After studying at the local polytechnic to become an engineer, Tarkhov went into industry, getting a job at the Sintezspirt plant in 1971. Ten years later, he headed the enterprise, and then moved up the ranks, becoming the general director of the Kuibyshevorgsintez production association.
At the end of the Soviet era, Tarkhov first entered politics.
In 1990–1991, he already headed the Kuibyshev Regional Executive Committee, thus becoming the last Soviet head of what is now the Samara Region. But since Tarkhov did not express unequivocal support for Boris Yeltsin in August 1991, he was removed from his post after the victory over the State Emergency Committee.
The ups and downs have given Tarkhov a unique outlook on life.
"I've been through this more than once and I've already taken a philosophical approach. Today I'm a director - for the team I'm a king, God and military commander, and in two hours I'm not a director, and everyone is already talking about me in the past tense," Viktor Aleksandrovich shared.
Having lost power in the region, he, like many other former "red directors" who found themselves in the new post-Soviet world, did not disappear. In 1992, he became the director of the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, and since 1994, Tarkhov has been the first and senior vice president of OAO NK YUKOS, a company founded by a well-known current foreign agent. Subsequently, Viktor Aleksandrovich managed to work as the chairman of the board of directors of Omskshina, a member of the board of directors of Samaraagrobank, and vice president of OAO Group Alliance.
At the same time, Tarkhov did not abandon his political ambitions: in 2000, he took second place in the elections for governor of the Samara region, and in 2001, he was elected as a deputy of the regional Duma. During those years, Tarkhov changed political parties one after another: "Opora Rossii", "Rodina", "Russian Party of Life", "A Just Russia". And in 2006, he took the post of mayor of Samara, defeating the previous mayor, Georgy Limansky.
The election campaign was marked by a scandal that occurred during the televised debates. The host was Vladimir Solovyov, who was invited from Moscow and did not skimp on harsh expressions addressed to Tarkhov. After the broadcast, the latter filed a lawsuit against Solovyov for 10 million rubles for insults. A year and a half later, the court of first instance ruled to collect 70 thousand rubles from the defendant.
Residents of Samara remember the time of Tarkhov's "reign" with mixed feelings. Publicist and State Duma deputy Mikhail Matveyev says of that period: " The oligarchs divided the city. All key positions in the administration were occupied by people from one or another business structure."
In turn, journalist Vitaly Papilkin, who during Viktor Aleksandrovich's mayoralty fervently criticized him, now speaks of him as a "decent man", admitting nevertheless that "in politics and business processes in Tarkhov's circle, everything was really not smooth". According to Papilkin, Tarkhov was " such a simple, kind, harmless, even a little eccentric guy ".
The history of Tarkhov's mayoralty is quite typical. He had some success in the sphere of housing and communal services, landscaping and development of communication networks, but numerous scandals dispelled his popularity. Viktor Aleksandrovich lost the 2010 elections.
After leaving politics, Tarkhov returned to business. Together with partners, he created a network of gas stations, which he then successfully sold. At various times, Viktor Aleksandrovich had shares in a number of companies, mainly associated with the oil industry and small aviation. In 2021, he was seriously ill with COVID.
On January 3, 2025, Viktor Tarkhov turned 77 years old. It is not yet known whether the former mayor of Samara managed to celebrate his birthday or was killed earlier. The news of the death of the ex-mayor and his wife spread on the evening of February 5. The investigation has not yet determined how exactly he and his wife lost their lives. Only irrefutable evidence has been collected that this was the work of a person close to them.
THE CUTTER
Among the scandals that accompanied Tarkhov's term, his family connections occupy a special place. In 2009, at one of the mayor's press conferences, an episode occurred: Vitaly Papilkin asked why he ignored his open letter with accusations of connections to local organized crime groups. The journalist especially emphasized the contacts of the mayor's daughter, Lyudmila Tarkhova. The journalist was not allowed to finish, citing the fact that the time of the press conference was strictly limited. Then Papilkin threw a shoe at Tarkhov, but missed and was quickly escorted out of the audience.
The question was indeed provocative. It is difficult to judge how fair the accusations made by Papilkin were, whether Tarkova's partners were involved in an organized crime group or whether all this was part of a local political struggle. But one family connection of the Tarkhovs with crime cannot be denied, because the father of the Samara dismemberer Ekaterina Tarkhova is a certain Sergey Loginov - a person no less remarkable than her grandfather, the mayor.
However, according to some sources, Loginov is in fact only Ekaterina's stepfather, and the real father of this woman is Konstantin Shcherbakov, who was a member of one of the Samara organized crime groups and was killed in 2001. But even if this is so, everywhere and always Ekaterina was perceived as the daughter of Loginov, known to Samara residents by the nickname Lord.
In 1986, Sergei Loginov took part in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, for which he was even awarded a state award. His fate could have been completely different: in other times, determined young people who proved themselves in the service of the Fatherland made careers as soldiers, rescuers, or crime fighters. But the hard times that came with the collapse of the USSR led Loginov and tens of thousands of others like him down a crooked path.
In the small satellite town of Samara, Novokuibyshevsk, Sergei Loginov became friends with Konstantin Berkut, who later became known in Samara as the head of a large organized crime group. Many further details were collected in the book "Bandit Samara" by Samara blogger Oleg Ivanets, published in 2015.
Berkut and Loginov started with petty racketeering, and spent their free time together. One day at a disco, Loginov met a young beauty named Lyuda. It is difficult to say now whether the romantic feeling that arose was sincere, or whether it was because Lyudmila turned out to be the daughter of the director of the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, Viktor Tarkhov.
In 1994, Loginov received his first term. He was found guilty of receiving stolen goods and using a false document. After his release in 1997, he married Lyudmila Tarkhova.
Rumor has it that it was the fact that his father-in-law headed a major oil refinery that prompted Loginov to start "cutting in" - that is, stealing oil from pipelines. Subsequently, there was no shortage of evil tongues claiming that Tarkhov was helping his son-in-law in the criminal business - but these rumors remained just rumors.
Samara Oblast has long been a leader in this type of crime due to the presence of a large number of enterprises specializing in oil refining. In recent years, the police have significantly reduced the number of such thefts, but have not completely stopped this trade.
Oleg Ivanets notes that since the beginning of the 21st century, it has become impossible for criminals to "protect" illegal businesses because they have disappeared. So they have started doing it themselves: oil taps, counterfeit alcohol and medicines, theft of spare parts...
TO A REAL INDIAN....
In 2003, Berkut was shot dead. And Loginov, nicknamed Lord in the criminal world, took a prominent place in the organized crime group, which was a branch of a larger structure known to residents of the region as "Indeitsy".
According to one version, the group got its name because of the "brothers" who were members of it, who loved Jeep Grand Cherokee cars. This "tribe" specialized in "oil taps".
"All the cutters began to be classified as "Indeitsy". But they were members of different organized crime groups, yes, sometimes friendly ones," says Ivanets.
For a long time, Loginov-Lord was one of the largest oil cutters in Samara. Observers noted that although Lord had ceased to have a direct connection with the Tarkhov family, he quietly engaged in criminal oil business for most of Viktor Aleksandrovich's mayoral period. True - and again a coincidence - before her father took the mayor's seat, Lyudmila Tarkhova divorced Lord.
The tappers were spreading out. Illegal pipelines were laid deep underground, underground oil storage facilities were disguised as farms or existing oil depots with convenient logistics were purchased for these purposes. Moreover, Loginov even managed to obtain classified information that allowed him to avoid being seen by special technical means designed to detect illegal taps.
In the fall of 2006, law enforcement officers managed to identify two points from which Lord carried out his activities. However, the criminal case was suspended.
In December 2008, Lord organized an illegal oil diversion near Turgenevka on a section of the Nizhnevartovsk-Kurgan-Kuibyshev main pipeline, which belonged to OAO Privolzhsknefteprovod.
But this business lasted only a month and a half - Loginov's people, who secretly drained the oil, were arrested. During these month and a half, they drained 5.6 thousand tons of raw materials, causing damage of 21.2 million rubles. The cashed profit from the thefts amounted to about 10 million.
Loginov learned that the crime was being investigated personally by the deputy head of the economic security service of the FSB Directorate for the Samara Region. It got to the point that Lord personally demanded that this FSB officer drop the case - and, having received a refusal, decided to get rid of the principled officer.
The bandits approached the matter creatively. They hired a contractor who agreed to put a capsule of poison under the mat of the FSB officer's car for a million rubles. It was assumed that the car owner would step on the capsule, crush it and be poisoned by the toxic fumes.
However, the plan was not implemented in time.
In February 2010, Loginov was detained on suspicion of illegally storing RGD-5 and F-1 grenades, as well as a revolver - all of which were found in Lyudmila Tarkhova's car. After that, the man confessed to preparing the murder. In the summer of 2010, Lord was sentenced to two years in prison for illegally storing weapons and explosives. Then a trial was held on the case of illegal oil taps - for this, Loginov was sentenced to six years in prison. And in April 2011, he was given 10 years in prison for attempting to poison a law enforcement officer.
Now, according to some reports, he is free again.
HUSBAND AND WIFE ARE ONE SATAN
Lord's ex-wife Lyudmila Tarkhova was no stranger to all sorts of scams, which, however, she managed with varying success. A family friend said about one of these cases : "She screwed everyone. That's the picture in their family."
But in 2020, the picture in the family became even brighter.
According to the investigation, Lyudmila got her hands on some information concerning the private life of the deputy of the Samara Regional Duma, Alexander Mileev - in the city, he is known not only as a politician, but also as a businessman. Allegedly, on the hard drive that Lyudmila Tarkhova got her hands on, there were several audio and video recordings, photographs and documents. Among them were some "unpleasant recordings of sex between two men". However, according to witnesses, these were fakes: they were unable to identify the heroes of the video.
The woman reportedly valued the information contained on these media at 200 million rubles. She gave the deputy a choice: buy them or see the incriminating evidence on the media. Mileev personally met with Tarkhova several times, and by July 2021, he had agreed with her on the terms of the transfer of funds.
And immediately after Lyudmila Viktorovna received the money, she was detained by FSB officers.
Tarkhova did not admit guilt. She insisted that she was simply repaying a debt that, according to her, Aleksandr Mileev owed to Viktor Tarkhov, her father. Lyudmila assured the investigator that her father himself had entrusted her with receiving the debt from Mileev and even issued her a corresponding receipt. And she allegedly used information about the deputy's private life only as an incentive for him to finally decide to part with the money.
The court spent several months sorting out the details of this complicated case: Mileev himself, former State Duma deputy Yevgeny Serper, and top officials of the Samara region were invited to testify. The defendant's mother also spoke at the hearings, but Viktor Tarkhov was unable to come to court. Moreover, during the preliminary investigation, he refused to be confronted with the victim.
In mid-December 2022, the hearings entered their final stage. During the debate, the prosecution requested 11 years of imprisonment for Lyudmila Tarkhova. The court ultimately reduced the sentence to seven years in a general regime penal colony.
It is noteworthy that Lyudmila Viktorovna came to the announcement of the verdict on December 19 with her daughter Ekaterina. And at the beginning of 2025, the court recognized Lyudmila Tarkhova, for the first time in her life, not as a fraudster, but as a victim. This time, her daughter was the accused. History is silent about the feelings this woman experienced when she learned how her parents died.
"THE MOST VILE GIRL"
According to people familiar with the Tarkhov family, as a child, Ekaterina received almost everything a child could wish for - and at the same time, she had an extremely capricious character.
| The second often follows the first. Some childhood deprivation, allowing the child to work for the things she wants, is one of the greatest gifts a parent can give. |
Now that her name has thundered throughout Russia, many have doubts that Ekaterina, no matter what she was, was capable of the cold-blooded murder of her own grandparents. After all, her grandmother Natalya Ivanovna, Viktor Tarkhov's wife, was a gentle, kind person who loved both her daughter and granddaughter very much.
However, Samara resident Natalya Pristenkova, who is familiar with this family, assures: of course she could!
"She's a disgusting girl. I crossed paths with her when she was still in high school, she was about 16 then. Even then she drank, partied, smoked, looked at everyone like they were sh*t. The only value for her was money, expensive clothes and jewelry. The teachers were horrified by her, her classmates once organized a flash mob and wrote in their essays: "I dream that Katya Tarkhova would die," - said Pristenkova.
If we are to believe her, it was already clear then that Ekaterina “would grow up to be a monster, as will happen with any child who is not cared for, and whose upbringing is replaced by an immeasurable amount of money.”
Apparently, it was precisely because little Katya was never denied anything that her main interest in life became elite consumption: branded jewelry, luxurious fur coats and expensive apartments.
But, apparently, while the girl was growing up, the family's wealth was declining. The grandfather gradually retired from business (although shares in businesses continued to bring in income), the father went to prison for a long time, and the mother followed him in search of money.
It cannot be said that Tarkhova Jr. herself did not try to earn money. According to her friends, Ekaterina was not averse to prostitution and sold drugs, but she herself became addicted to them and even underwent treatment for drug addiction for a time.
Having cured her addiction, Ekaterina married an Israeli citizen named Belsky. In 2018, the couple had a son, but family life did not work out. Perhaps because it became difficult for the husband to withstand his wife's character and demands. The couple divorced, and Ekaterina and her son returned to Russia.
She did not find a job and lived on the support of her grandparents. She became hooked on drugs again. Viktor and Natalya Tarkhov, already fully understanding what their granddaughter was like, tried to have her declared partially incapacitated. They did not give her the alimony money she received from her ex-husband. The grandmother controlled all of her granddaughter's funds, and she raised her great-grandson.
Apparently, Ekaterina increasingly clashed with her grandparents and eventually decided to physically eliminate them. The method of murder itself remains a mystery: most of the remains of the murdered have not yet been found, and Belskaya herself flatly refused to talk to the investigation.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SOKOLOV IS RESTING
In the fall of 2019, Russia was shocked by a terrible crime. Oleg Sokolov, an associate professor at St. Petersburg State University, killed student Anastasia Yeshchenko, his common-law wife. Trying to get rid of the body, Sokolov began sawing the corpse with a hacksaw. To overcome his disgust and fear, he drank large doses of alcohol in the process.
When the criminal tried to throw the backpack with the dead woman's severed hands into the water, he himself fell into the river, after which he was detained on the spot. Sokolov was let down by the fact that his psyche could not withstand the horror of what was happening.
Ekaterina Belskaya, however, controlled herself 100%. She prepared for the crime in advance: she bought a construction saw, canisters with chemicals and plastic containers - the purchases are confirmed by data from her bank account. During the inspection of the victims' apartment, it was established that the premises had been treated with a chemical alkali solution. The decisive evidence was the body parts of Viktor and Natalia Tarkhov found in the apartment.
The couple was last seen in early January: CCTV cameras installed in their building on Vilonovskaya Street recorded them entering the entrance. Soon, Ekaterina showed up at her grandfather's apartment with large black bags. After a while, she took them out already filled and approached a taxi waiting for her. The moment she took out the bags was captured on video. There is also a recording of her pulling a barrel out of the apartment. A version has emerged that preserved bodies were stored in the barrels for a whole month.
The accused's phone made it possible to track where and when she called a taxi, where the cars stopped. It became clear that the granddaughter scattered the packaged body parts into garbage containers in different parts of the city. From there they ended up in the city dump. More than a hectare of the Preobrazhenka landfill was examined in search of evidence; the search continues.
During the crime, Ekaterina demonstrated inhuman calm. After the murder, she spent several weeks writing messages to relatives and friends on behalf of her grandfather and grandmother. In this way, Ekaterina imitated the life of her already dead family members, and spent the time she gained on selling the property of Viktor and Natalia Tarkhov. Greed let her down. Having crudely forged documents, she tried to seize her grandfather's share in one of the oil refineries, but the employees sensed something was wrong and raised the alarm.
On February 3, Belskaya was detained. Ekaterina told the police officers who came to her that her grandparents were in Moscow and called a lawyer friend. But this did not help her: the woman was taken to a pretrial detention center.
At the time of the mother's arrest, her son, a six-year-old boy, was in the apartment. The Tarkhovs' phones and documents were also found there. The woman was charged with double murder. She still refuses to testify.
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