Russian crime bosses killed in Ukraine

Three Russian crime bosses recruited by the Wagner Group were killed in the war in Ukraine. They are Sergei Maksimenko, Andrei Berezhnykh, and Igor Kusk. Maksimenko was serving a 25-year prison sentence in the Republic of Mordovia. He headed a criminal group in the city of Penza.

Berezhnykh was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder and other crimes in Saratov Oblast from 1994 to 2011. Berezhnykh was killed during the fighting in Ukraine on December 8, 2022, having joined Wagner a month earlier to escape prison.

Igor Kusk had been serving a 23-year prison sentence in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic. Kusk established his criminal group, the Kuskovites, in Tatarstan in 1998. The group was active and were notable for having many veterans of the Afghan war in their ranks. Ihor Kusk was brought to the Russian city of Nizhnyokamsk by plane in a closed coffin. Sources say that he was killed by a mine. Relatives say his head was blown off by a shell fragment.