The mother of the murdered 22-year-old Vadim Vashchenko from the city of Lermontov in the Stavropol Territory has been seeking adequate punishment for her son’s murderers for 9 months — they are suspected of causing grievous bodily harm that led to death by “negligence.”
On February 15, 2025, after work, Vadim went to his friends, war veterans 35-year-old Sergei Polezhailov and 36-year-old Igor Kardanov yo their dorms. The investigation believes that all three of them drank into the night, and later Sergey and Igor started beating Vadim, allegedly for a stolen phone. They punched and kicked him, poured boiling water over him, and cut him with a knife, gagging him. Later, the killers left Vadim unconscious at the dumpsters, where he died. The cause of death was traumatic shock and cerebral edema. Burns, incised wounds and signs of torture were found on the victim’s body.
The men were detained and charged with “intentionally causing serious harm to health, resulting in the death of the victim by negligence.” In order for the case to be reclassified as an article on murder, in April 2025 Natalia had to record a video message to the head of the Investigative Committee Bastrykin. After that, the case was transferred to the regional administration.
“They wanted to leave to war, so I wrote down an appeal to change their article and keep them,” Natalia explains in a conversation with ASTRA. Now, the case has been returned to the Predgorny district, where the actions of the accused were not even seen as murder at first, Natalia says in a new appeal to Bastrykin.
Moreover, Natalia was informed in the Investigative Committee that one of the repeat offenders, while in jail, had already committed a similar crime — tortured a cellmate to death. In a conversation with ASTRA, she clarified that we are talking about Kardanov, the one who killed Vadim.
“They had previous crimes, including murder. They signed the contract and returned as heroes, defenders of the motherland. And they keep killing,” the woman says.
After the repeated appeal, Bastrykin instructed the head of the regional Investigative Committee to “speed up the investigation of the criminal case and submit a report on its results.”
