Officer Demin claims: He was tortured for investigating drug and fuel trafficking in the 132 brigade.

In September, the Z-community was shocked by the suicide videos of the military long-range investigation regiment of “DPR” “Goodwin” and “Ernest” that died after a conflict with a commander with a telling call sign “Evil”. In the video, the military told how in the 87th separate regiment, the commanders protect the drug trade and the sale of everything that enters the regiment in general.

This is not a unique story.

The deputy commander of the 109th regiment, Senior Lieutenant Kirill Demin, contacted the editorial office of ASTRA in October, on the eve of the detention by the military police. According to him, the command of the 132 brigade is profiting from the sale of marijuana to the military — as well as the resale of humanitarian aid, fuel and even weapons. Demin was conducting his own investigation until a plastic bag was put on his head at a checkpoint near Yenakievo. After being tortured, Demin escaped from the “SMO” zone.

Demin managed to transfer more than three hours of audio and video recordings and two dozen pages of documents to ASTRA. He had already sent all these application files to the authorities, but this did not lead to any result.

ASTRA tells what Demin learned about the illegal sale on the property of the 109th regiment and how the army authorities deal with those who become a nuisance.

This is a test purchase: in the video, security forces from the military police in black bomber jackets with patches of the Russian flag surround the dealer’s car. The recording was made in Gorlovka, where the 109th regiment is based. Kirill Demin, deputy commander of the 109th regiment, organized the purchase, as he himself told ASTRA, because subordinates complained about “f*cked up” fellow drug addicts with whom it was impossible to perform combat missions.

On the recording, the military put a man who introduced himself to them as Roma facing the glass. Demin told ASTRA that this man “poisoned” soldiers not only of the 109th regiment, but also of the entire 132nd Gorlovka brigade. Roma has a paper bag on the passenger seat, where marijuana is packed in several layers of plastic. The military notes the pungent smell of cannabis when they unwrap the package. Before that, they “undercover” bought drugs for rubles with scanned numbers. “He bought marijuana, called weed among the common people, in the amount of 250 grams for marked bills,” Demin recalls. The dealer was immediately handed over to the police in Yenakievo.

Demin volunteered for the war in the first months after the invasion began. He got a job in Ramzan Kadyrov’s “Akhmat” Chechen battalion. In 2023, volunteer Demin was transferred to the 109th regiment (military unit 34494) for “good performance”, where he was appointed deputy commander of the unit. His predecessor died on the front line. Demin says that when signing the transfer order, he was asked to “put things in order there.”

Demin began his investigation in the second half of 2023. His subordinates told him about the illegal trade. Anatoly Tereshin, the acting head of the food service, who, according to Demin, sells food from warehouses, was the first to fall under suspicion of the deputy political officer. He was the one who bought the grass at the control purchase from the video.

“Tereshin sold goods for a million and a half to the side in just two weeks. They don’t give enough to the guys on the front line, but he sells stew, olives, sausage, humanitarian aid…”, says Demin.

Deputy Chairman Demin gave the ASTRA journalist video and audio of Anatoly Tereshin’s interrogation.

In the video, Tereshin admits that he sells army food on the instructions of the regiment’s deputy commander in the rear, Lieutenant Sergei Belik. “I ask you to ensure my safety and to take me away from him,” Tereshin says in the video. Belik allegedly threatened Tereshin with being sent to the front line if he surrendered him.

According to Demin, Tereshin was interrogated by several other commanders together with him. However, it cannot be ruled out that Tereshin could face pressure behind the scenes. Tereshin himself, in a conversation with ASTRA, said that “everything is fine” in his regiment, but he was not filmed on the interrogation video. Tereshin refused to answer further questions.

“I last purchased it on November 2, 2023. The cannabis was brought by a civilian named Roma. I called him, he brought it to me,” Anatoly Tereshin says in another video of the interrogation. In the same month, Demin and his colleagues conducted a “control purchase” from Roma.

The name of Lieutenant Belik also turns up on another video sent by Demin. In the frame, Demin and his subordinates — including Tereshin from the food service. They are sitting on a bench in the center of Gorlovka. Demin is in uniform, he just arrived from the positions. Everyone else is in civilian clothes. Everyone has a cup of coffee in their hands. The clock is at 15:10, today is November 14th, 2023.

Before starting to ask questions, Demin asks subordinates several times if they are under pressure. “It’s just now that information has appeared that they [want to] frame me, that I beat and torture people,” Demin says in the video.

One of the soldiers claims that he sees Demin for the first time in his life, but admits that he takes drugs: “I’ve been here for a year and a half. Periodically, yes, I can. <…> I take marijuana.” Later, it becomes clear from his answers that the man is engaged in refueling cars. When asked by Demin if he knows anything about the sale of fuel, he replies: “No.”

In this video, Demin (in camouflage on the left on the bench) collects testimony from subordinates about illegal trade in the 109th regiment.

At this time, the military man sitting next to him nods his head. He introduced himself as the commander of the support company, Andrei Krapchitov. He says that the signature on the invoices is put by the deputy commander of the regiment Belik.

Andrey continues, the fuel sales scheme is controlled by Umakhan Gadjesov, Deputy Commander in Arms, with the call sign “Kaspiy”, who is responsible for refueling.

“Krapchitov and his subordinate directly told me how they took fuel to some “trees” and sold it to truckers,” Demin told ASTRA. Subsequently, according to the deputy, Krapchitov, under pressure, will declare that he tortured him.

“I closed 4 drug dealers in 2.5 months. As soon as I stepped on the trail of fuel, Gadjesov abruptly sent me on vacation. As soon as I arrived, an hour and a half later I was already in the basement,” says Demin.

Demin calls Umakhan Gadjesov one of the organizers of illegal trade in the 109th regiment. Fuel, according to him, goes to truckers — from one battalion at least 10 tons of fuel per month, and Gadjesov has 3 battalions in total. Gadjesov is also allegedly engaged in the sale of weapons — Demin claims that once the incoming Dragunov sniper rifles were written off in the 109th regiment. “The documents came, but there were no rifles themselves,” says Demin.

According to him, Demin handed over the evidence on the sale of fuel and equipment to the main military prosecutor’s office of the “DPR”. When Gadjesov found out about this, he offered Demin money for silence — 600 thousand rubles a month.

“I am a person who works within the framework of the law. Well, like a robot. They tell me that I am a “statutory moron.” When I work, I always do as the book and the law say. And they didn’t like it there. They told me — 600 a month — and you pretend that you don’t see anything. I replied: “Vladimir Vladimirovich pays my salary,” Demin claims.

On another audio recording sent to the editorial office, Demin’s subordinate tells tom about the disappearance of three KAMAZ trucks with ammunition in the Kherson region, Demin advises to contact the authorities. He replies that he has already applied — the security forces have not done anything. But the information reached Gadjesov, and he beat up a military man.

— Write a statement, who’s bothering you? You have the right,” Demin advises.

— I’m scared, to be honest.

— They won’t do anything to you. I wrote it. See, I’m still alive. Do you know why? Because the law is the same for everyone.

After that, Demin says, the interlocutor was sent to the basement. His further fate is unknown to him.

ASTRA has already written about the deputy commander of the 109th regiment Umakhan Gadjesov with the call sign “Caspian”. According to former prisoners Vyacheslav Trutnev and Dmitry Ostrovsky (they started making incriminating tracks about their commanders on the run), before escaping from the positions, they saw Gadjesov throw stormtroopers into a pit as punishment.

“This is a cellar that is being closed. And the wounded, he left them all. There was no food in this cellar, no water was given. Well, maybe a bottle. Just so they don’t die of thirst, that’s all. Three of the wounded died immediately in the cellar. And the other twelve people, who were wounded, who were whole, he sent them without weapons, without armor, without everything to storm at once.” According to them, no one survived the assault.

At the end of November last year, during a sudden two-week vacation, Demin began to receive calls from subordinates. The deputy chairman tells: They admitted that they were pressured to testify against Demin. Allegedly, the deputy chairman subjected them to torture. Demin returned from vacation on December 10. That day he was stopped at a checkpoint near Yenakievo. “Three young men put a bag on my head, handcuff my hands, pull me out of the car, put me in their car and drive me for about 10 minutes,” Demin describes further events. That’s how he first found himself in the basement.

In the basement, Demin, according to him, was kept in an “ice chamber” — this is “a small dark room without light. The floor is tiled. There is a foam mat on it – one for two. No blanket, absolutely nothing. It’s -12 outside, but it feels like -20 there. I was wearing only a T-shirt and a suit. And you’re constantly sitting with a bag wrapped in duct tape on your head,” says Demin.

For the first week, Demin was beaten several times a day, was strangled him with a bag, he passed out, then was brought to his senses and beaten again. He was electrocuted, inflicted at least 15 blows, he says. They brought a prisoner into the cell, who also beat him. They threatened to bring in a prisoner who would rape him.

“My hands swelled from the handcuffs. I thought they would have to be amputated. The marks are almost to the bone. All sides of my arms are blue. — He says. — I was beaten with batons, sticks, kicks, strangled. They electrocuted me so much that I couldn’t even hold back my feces. That is, it was already a near-death state. Just the Gestapo, as it is. I have experienced the most real captivity, only among my own, so to speak.”

Demin suggests that the torture cellar is located in the area of the headquarters of the military police platoon at the 132nd brigade in Yenakievo. One of the participants in the torture is a military police officer with the call sign “Kazakh”. He also participated in the arrest of the drug dealer Roma and even got a little bit into the frame of the video with the control purchase, Demin claims.

While deputy political officer Demin was being tortured, his mother Tatyana “raised a fuss” — the woman began to write and call “all kinds of authorities.” “She realized that something was wrong. They told her that I was supposedly on the front line,” Demin recalls. As a result, the mess reached the “chief of beatings” — 49-year-old military Almaz Arlashev with the call sign “Gyurza”. Demin’s mother Tatiana told ASTRA: “Gyurza” personally called her and threatened to kill both her son and her. Tatiana also called Umakhan Gadjesov, who told her that her son would be “brought” to the unit in a few days. He knew where Demin was being held, Tatiana claims.

There is a document among Demin’s colleagues that supposedly Almaz “Gyurza” was detained when it turned out that he and his subordinates beat an ordinary soldier by the name of Rudakov to death. In the murder case, Alexander Petrov, Anatoly Kotov, Alexander Fomin, Denis Shevchenko, Ruslan Iskaziev, Maxim Burbin were also checked. According to the results of the inspection, “Gyurza” returned to the front line and did not take any punishment.

In Demin’s basement, “For the first 2 days they completely deprived him of food <…> they used suffocation to stop breathing, forcing him to sign a confession to crimes that he did not commit,” follows from Tatyana Demina’s complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office of the “DPR” dated December 23.

“Now the son is in the 34494 hospital, he has been banned from making calls anywhere. He urgently needs medical help, his hands are festering from handcuffs, from traces of torture by electricity. There are bruises on the body, there are suspicions of a TBI and a rib fracture.”

A week later, Demin was forced to sign a report stating that he agreed to be demoted to 5 lower-level positions. “You understand that this cannot be done. According to the charter, if a person has even done something, they are lowered to one position,” says Demin.

“I am a victim. — And who am I? — I don’t know. Perhaps you are a criminal, Comrade Colonel.”

For two weeks after the torture, Demin, with a broken rib and bruises of the spine, was hidden in the hospital 34494. There he was denied medical care. “They have been beating him since December 10th. And they examined him only on December 29, and even then he was all black,” Tatyana Demina recalls.

Subsequently, Demin secretly recorded a telephone conversation with “Kaspiy” Gadjesov from the 109th regiment. He admitted that there was indeed an order not to release Demin for treatment, Gadjesov received it “from above”.

— Where is the evidence? If I’m guilty, handcuff me in jail.
— Did he tell you whether it was or not?
— Of course, after they electrocute you in the basement for a week. I still fear for my life!
— Why didn’t you get in touch?
— Because I don’t know who to believe anymore. Now the investigating authorities will figure it out. Why do you understand this at all?
— You admitted it yourself!
— I didn’t admit it, I had to admit, these are different things, Comrade Colonel. And if you hold this position… Why didn’t you sue me when you knew your fighter was being fucked for days? Why didn’t you do it?
— Calm down! Are you injured for six months? Well, go get treated.
— And also, Comrade Colonel, why didn’t you provide me with medical care when I personally asked you about it?
— I didn’t know, I was given a task.
— And who sets such tasks for you?
— BRKa [combat order] regimental.
— Brigade Commander, is everything correct? You understand that this is a criminal order. I’m going to sue. I just can’t understand why you’re involved in this outright mayhem.
— I told you, while you are being checked, you have no right to be here.
— If there were checks on me, there would be paper on me. <…> Comrade Colonel, tell me, does it say here that I am being checked? Here at the very end it says essentially. “The statement of Demin K.A.”. Do you have a paper that checks on me? No. Only arguments and speculation… I can’t do the tasks right now, my 8th rib is broken.
— Then get treated.
— I’m being treated… it’s a forced measure there — to be in a bulletproof vest.

According to the deputy, Dermendzhi and his subordinates beat out confessions of extortion and rape from Demin, which he did not commit. On the record, Dermendzhi does not deny torture:

Dermengi : My friend…
Demin: I’m not your friend.
— What position are you in now?
— I do not know myself.
— Are you an active serviceman?
— Active.
— Well, what does it say in the charter? That I am the direct superior for all military personnel.
— You are the direct boss only in relation to these people… And you are doing illegal actions.
— How long do you need to finish your procedures and arrive here, where I am waiting for you?
— I don’t know, I will consult with competent people … Either in the presence of the commandant, or the military prosecutor. And we will talk.
— Whatever you say, my friend!
— But I have no desire to talk to you personally. I do not know what purpose you have come for. We’ve already had a conversation once, when I was electrocuted in front of you.
— And what else?
— And nothing. I don’t want to talk anymore.
— They don’t ask you. You are an active serviceman, I came to talk to you, this is my service.

Demin claims that 4 criminal cases were tried against him — for beating subordinates, torture and rape. However, he was not officially charged, even despite the confessions signed under torture.

At the end of December, “The Prosecutor gave an official paper to ensure my safety and decided to second me to another unit,” says Demin. Instead, the commander of the 132nd Gorlovka Brigade, Sergei Naimushin, returned Demin to the 3rd motorized rifle battalion of military unit 52892, whose employees tortured Demin — and sent him to the line of contact as a private. With a broken rib and a bruised spine. According to him, Demin’s phone was taken away at the front, the only one was not allowed to wash and cigarettes were refused.

“After my complaints and his, they sent him to the storm, of course, they took away his phone so that he could not tell me something,” Tatyana Demina recalls the events of the beginning of the year. Demin was allowed to keep in touch with his mother by his colleagues, who gave him a phone despite the ban. “He had a tooth flux on [the line of contact], I asked him to take him to the doctor, to no avail. The guys opened it for him there themselves,” says Tatiana.

Due to the complaints sent on behalf of Demin, a check came in. According to Tatiana, her son was promised to be removed from the front line — if he stopped telling inspectors about illegal trade in the 132 brigade. “But Kirill repeated over and over again how it was.”

All this time, Demin’s relatives sent dictated statements on his behalf to the prosecutor’s office. Colonel Titarchuk came to investigate the situation.

“He listened to me, studied dictaphones, documents, video recordings, said that there were no questions for me and there would be questions for them. But since Naimushin is a Hero of Russia, this case began to slow down. — says Demin. — Shoigu personally presented him with the “Star”.”

“Personally, Naimushin told me that he is a king and a god. When I told them about the laws of the Russian Federation, they laughed in my face, they said that this was not the Russian Federation, but the “DPR”. He didn’t listen to me that my flux was inflating and my rib was broken. Without a bulletproof vest and without a machine gun, under escort, I sent him to the front. If they do this with the officers — the deputy commander of the unit — do you imagine what they are doing there with the soldiers?” asks Demin.

Demin served as a private on the “front line” in the Gorlovka 132nd brigade for about two months. According to him, he met an old colleague there. “I know a guy, I’m with him, I used to control Wahhabis with him in Kabardino-Balkaria. He called me back for a cigarettes, said: “you will be reset. You will be killed by a drone. I’m telling you, brother, between us, get out of here,” says Demin. — “They tried to probe my connections first, they found out that my father is a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, my mother has a successful real estate business. But there are no military in my family. They said: “Now we will reset you and say that it was Ukrainian sfault.”

Demin does not tell the details of his escape from the war — he only says that he found a man “who at his own risk” agreed to take him out of the “SMO zone”.

During the conversation with the ASTRA journalist, Demin was in his homeland, in Engels in the Saratov region. All complaints written under his dictation – to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office, the Saratov Ombudsman, etc. — remained unanswered, the military claims.

The prosecutor’s office sent documents to the 121st military investigation department [the editorial office has], in which it was said that the department saw signs of a crime under articles on unlawful imprisonment, torture and abuse of official authority. However, a criminal case was not initiated. All the officials remained in their places. In the military police department, Demin’s mother was told that they allegedly did not have an employee with the call sign “Gyurza”, and no one detained Demin.
But the victim himself is now threatened with unauthorized abandonment of a part.

“I had to go here to surrender to the local commandant’s office. But no one is looking for me. If I surrender to them, they will put me in a cell, and then they will take me back to this den of animals. And then they will definitely kill me. What won’t be done in Saratov — I no longer believe in it. That these freaks don’t have the connections to reach Saratov. Even if the deputy political officer of the district was able to close his mouth, who began to stand up for me…,” he says. — I didn’t sleep for days to put things in order there. I’m used to having everything in order. What the law says, we do. With this letter of the law, I almost choked and died. They immediately made it clear to me that I had stepped on the tail of some big people with this fuel. They sat quietly stealing, and it would have been better if I had closed my mouth,” says Demin.

“Why did I go there [to the war]? Because I had something to show and prove. I thought it would be within the framework of the legislation, but in the end – to torture the basement—to break the ribs, and then to push with the front. Now I have a broken destiny, and I just don’t know what to do. I walked in the front rows in Popasnaya, after that I went to the “SMO” again to prove that I am not a coward. But when there is such lawlessness, can you imagine how insulting it is to me?”

During the preparation of the material, Demin was detained. Demin has disappeared from communication. He was detained and taken to the commandant’s office. According to Demin’s mother, from there he and other military personnel planned to return to the war. Demin, however, was ordered to undergo an examination in a psychiatric hospital.

According to Tatyana Demina, doctors previously found her son to have PTSD. She says that in recent months he had hardly slept and suffered from panic attacks, and when talking about torture in the basement of the 132 brigade, his hands began to tremble. “They completely destroyed his psyche,” Tatiana ASTRA said.

“The last thing to do is to help such people,” – the response of the commanders of the 132 brigade

ASTRA managed to get through to Gadjesov and Dermendzhi. According to them, criminal cases have been initiated against Demin under several articles at once.

Dermendzhi confirmed that the military of the 132 brigade bought drugs, adding that, however, “every city” has its own drug dealers. According to him, Demin did organize a control purchase of marijuana, but he invented allegations about the sale of fuel and equipment in order to discredit the brigade command after the offense.

Dermendzhi claims that Demin forced the wife of a subordinate military man to perform oral sex and even confessed to it himself during interrogation (the brigade command refused to provide a recording of the interrogation and any other confirmation of this version). Demin himself told ASTRA that he confessed to the rape case under torture.

“You see, you are doing one thing well, and in parallel you are doing nonsense, breaking the law <…> An inspection came, interviewed all these people, everything was confirmed, and therefore he collected dirt later. If you could hear him banging like a machine gun, everything is just calmly telling in such detail that.. well, how can you get it?”, – said Dermendzhi in a conversation with ASTRA.

Gadjesov expressed the same version of ASTRA. According to him, Demin beat out testimony about the illegal fuel trade. “He [Demin], for example, found a man, beat him up so that he would tell him that they were doing this. And extorted money. The man was doing bad things. The guys came and said that he was rampant. I appealed to the commander, the command made a decision,” Gadjesov told ASTRA.

“He [Demin] is not really a very good person. The last thing to do is to help such people. After all, there is a law, a court. They will consider everything: interview witnesses, they will figure it out. In any case, he will be convicted, there is something there. The fact that he says there that something was used against him there — yes, we hid him when we realized that they could even deal with him there. When the regiment found out what he was doing. He was appointed according to a corrupt scheme, and Zaitsev patronized him. Zaitsev is no longer serving, so he was removed from here,” Dermendzhi said.

About the torture of Gadjesov, “I have not heard and do not know anything.” He explained Demin’s disappearance for several days by his “binge drinking.” “He appeared, then went on an alcoholic binge, there was a trial on him,” he claims. This is also stated by Valery Konstantinovich. However, according to him, he used drugs with subordinates.

“I know that he was caught, so now another wave begins: “I’m so poor, unhappy,” I’ll probably have to go after him and bring him here,” Dermendzhi said.

“They remove ammunition from corpses, drink rainwater, run under fire and look for food in basements,” — about what is happening in a military unit a year later

The wife of one of the fighters told ASTRA about what is happening in this military unit now. According to her, commanders allow outright indifference to the lives of subordinates. She claims that the wounded, even with severe injuries — including those who can only move on crutches, are sent to deadly assaults.

“The fighters have no security, they remove ammunition from corpses, drink rainwater, run under fire and look for food in basements. The commanders say that they don’t care that they will die, they will be given new people,” she said.

According to her, some of the military personnel sent to the front line in the summer still remain in light summer uniforms, without winter uniforms. Since September, there has been no rotation in the Toretsk direction, where her husband is fighting.

In profile chats, military wives from this unit also complain about the lack of evacuation. “I do not know who is being pulled out there, my husband is there, two of them are alive out of a hundred people, seven brigades have fallen in front of them, no one is going to evacuate him. They get two batteries off the drone for walkie-talkies, and that’s it. They are sitting wounded,” she says.

“It is impossible to get through, both the president and the Ministry of Defense wrote… This is lawlessness. I see thousands of videos about this 132 brigade, and nothing — they just kill hundreds of people, and that’s it.”

Author: Anna Snegireva