The wild dogs of Umba

By Tatiana Britskaya, Novaya Gazeta

“We had to wait for the police. It takes a long time for the task force to come from Kandalaksha. It’s almost 100 km from here. So I took Maxim home and told him to try and sleep for a couple of hours at least. When there was finally a knock on the door, he got up and left with them. He did not resist or try to hide anything. I gave them the knife myself.” 

This is the statement from Maxim Tyulkov’s wife. At her request, we’ll call her Marina. Tyulkov is accused of stabbing a man on New Year’s Eve. Almost the entire village has pitched in to help find him a lawyer. They consider him a people’s avenger. Marina continues in bewilderment: 

“Everything happened by chance. Maxim was the victim. Timchenko could have survived. If the state had performed even one of its functions in Umba, the police, the court, the prosecutor’s office or even the hospital, we would still have Maxim instead of a fresh cross in the cemetery.” 

Over the holidays, the New Year’s stabbing in Umba was the main news that fed the Murmansk region journalists. It started with news reports which were as stingy as a crime report. But by the 9th day when “town resident” Viktor Timchenko was buried, his status had been raised by local bloggers to that of a criminal boss or even a “thief in law”, a name given to the untouchable criminal elite in the times of the USSR. But of course none of this is true. The truth is that for many years, the village tried to get rid of Viktor Timchenko and his older brother Vladimir. There were several unsuccessful police investigations and court cases and then as a last resort, Umba even turned to the president for help. None of their appeals ever received any results. 

Because of this, to many people in the village, former firefighter and paratrooper Maxim Tyulkov is a hero for his participation in a random fight with Timchenko. The police though, are accusing him of murder.

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A harsh place

The Timchenko brothers have been living in Umba for a long time but not many locals consider them their own. Like many people who came from different parts of the country, their family originally came to work in the Tersky region for a logging company in the village of Vostochnoye Munozero. Afterwards, they moved to the regional center and Vladimir, the elder brother, fought in Chechnya where he was wounded when his armored personnel carrier was blown up. He received  the Order of Courage for that. Now he works as a driver and takes people from Murmansk to Umba by minibus. It’s hard to say what the younger brother had been doing. Probably he spent most of his time fishing and drinking, the same as most of the men in the village. A good half of the people I talked to didn’t want their picture taken or to be mentioned by name. The deceased had many such friends and relatives.

Umba is one of the oldest settlements on the Kola Peninsula. The Pomors, descendants of the Novgorodians who fled to the North from the repressions of Ivan the Terrible, have always lived here. Here, there was no serfdom and they could live by the sea and trade with the Norwegians. They knew the languages and discovered new lands. 

Now Umba is the center of the Tersky district and has become the poorest and drunkest in the region despite being the center of the most expensive tourism in the Murmansk region. Every summer, helicopters fly people in who pay up to 10 thousand dollars a week for a chance to fish on the Semuzhi river. Officially, it is catch and release and you must have a licence to catch the salmon. Unofficially, the helicopters seldom fly back empty and regional environmentalists seriously discuss the need for a moratorium on fishing. Allowing almost unlimited fishing has brought the most valuable salmon herd on the Varzuga River to near complete extinction. 

This fishing trade has also put the local population on the brink of extinction. There is almost no work in the area and locals must find their food from the rivers. Unlicensed fishing though is illegal and there are always fines from the border guards. Technically, there is no border here but the FSB border service makes its own indicators here for the suppression of poaching. Half of the village has served time.

A few years ago, there were rallies in Umba where people demanded that the authorities return the hospital that was closed for financial reasons. Nevertheless, there is no “Central Hospital” anymore and now, the only medical help is at a branch of the hospital in the neighboring Kandalaksha district. In difficult cases, an ambulance takes you to Kandalaksha, which is only 100 km away.

The criminal “authority” from the sawmill

There are many police reports regarding Vladimir Timchenko, Victor’s older brother. Of local police officers, everyone respects traffic police officer Yulia, who has taken away many licences for drunk driving. “Traffic Cop Yulia” is considered a local and people here listen to her. Artem Tyulkov, Maxim’s brother, says that Yulia taught people to drive by the rules and fasten their seat belts. But even the principled Yulia could not find justice for Vladimir Timchenko. 

A video obtained by the Novaya Gazeta’s shows a noticeably dunken Timchenko showering the policewoman with the dirtiest of insults in front of several bystanders. Yulia tells him that she is writing him up and he reacts by saying, “I have a great lawyer.” And then he walks away showing her an obscene gesture and unzipping his fly.

The legal consequences of this skirmish cannot really be found on the websites of the courts but it is possible to find other cases.

In 2014, Vladimir Timchenko was convicted of hitting a policeman in the face and tearing off his shoulder strap. By the time of this incident, Timchenko had two suspended sentences behind him, one for robbery and the other for extortion. In this new case, he was tried under Article 318 of the Criminal Code, the very article under which opposition activists have been imprisoned for throwing plastic bottles on police. He was convicted and sentenced to 2 years 6 months but immediately paroled with a “conditional” release. 

As already mentioned, there is not an excess of local police in Umba and patrols are sent here from Kandalaksha. One night, Timchenko and some friends were invited by visiting police to a rented apartment to answer questions as to “whether they were paying their taxes properly”. They were obviously breaking the laws actively so the police met them with machine guns at the ready. Nonetheless, when they tried detaining their “guests” for wandering around town drunk, a fight broke out.

Timchenko later explained that “he refused to get into the patrol car because the police officers were not local.” One of his friends, Alexey Sorokoumov, claimed that it was the police who attacked and beat Timchenko. Sorokoumov was later convicted of making a false statement. He is currently serving a sentence for kidnapping and extortion. Documents say that Vladimir Timchenko personally coordinated the testimony of the defense witnesses and even tried to be present at their interview to shoot a video of the process. This is also in the court verdict. 

There is one more interesting detail from this case. Despite medical examiners finding mental disorders associated with the use of psychoactive substances in the defendant, Victor Timchenko is still employed as a minivan driver carrying passengers between Murmansk and Umba. 

The elder Timchenko was also convicted of extortion when, together with a certain “K”, he beat up a local fisherman and tried to take his boat motor. Umba is a harsh place and the fisherman started shooting back and so managed to escape. Timchenko and “K” were also convicted of robbery when, after intimidating a saleswomen along with another friend “B”, they stole two bottles of vodka from a local store. They were tried for a moderately severe crime but were again given a conditional release. The state made an attempt to replace the suspended sentence with a real one once. This was 5 years ago but the court refused this request.

“They started beating him with a stick”

Natalia Kameneva runs a local store. She works there with her husband and they also maintain a dog shelter. She is a mother with many children and has these words to say:

“They were constantly coming in to demand vodka. They had to close the other all-night shops in the village because of this. I am the only one to stay open. I’m not afraid of them. We have cameras everywhere. We know they are afraid of cameras. But they have been throwing words around. They’ve threatened to burn the place down. I called the police and they came but nothing happened. We have written at least twenty complaints but the answers just don’t come. I’ve never even been called in to explain the situation personally. Nothing but peace and quiet ever comes from them. People say that these guys have some kind of protection and I believe it because I have seen them find out about material complaints made about them. They knew who wrote them and what was said. They’re just limitless.”

Tamara Kokorina is one of the few who is not afraid. She managed to bring a case to court about a beating her son received from Viktor Timchenko, the one who was killed on New Year’s Eve. Villagers say the younger brother was the ringleader and they feared him more than the older one. However, unlike Vladimir’s rich biography, Viktor’s criminal record is freely available  except for only one incident which was removed 10 years ago. That was for “causing harm to Mikhail Kokorin’s health.” 

In November 2018, Kokorin was 17 years old when he was severely beaten at a friend’s house. Timchenko came to the house and demanded that Kokorin tell them where his older brother was hiding. They suspected him of puncturing the wheels of his car.  

“They beat him very cruelly. Viktor Timchenko and Misha Tarasov. They asked my son to tell them where his older brother was. And he said, “I don’t know” and they started beating him with a poker. Then they tore off a leg from the table and started beating him with that. There was no living place left on him. When the ambulance finally arrived, even the doctor was scared. He couldn’t find a place to give him an injection. He was wearing white socks but when they took off his shoes, the socks were completely red. They had stood him up against the wall to beat him. When he fell, they picked him up and started beating him again. He finally had to talk. They gave us a week to come up with 20,000 rubles (€250) to pay for his tires. We had to agree because it was the only way to get them to leave.” 

She wrote a statement but in the beginning, the case would not move at all. And then the investigators began to change the stories. 

“They offered me and my mother some money. They just pay everyone off. Victor came around and he said, “I have a good lawyer, just take the money.” The prosecutor’s office even told us to take the money. “If they’re offering it, take it. Nothing is going to happen.” But I wouldn’t take their money. And after this, I was never directly threatened but when the case made it to the courts, word started going around that they were going to cut me. Everyone was afraid of them. I was the only one who went to the end. But then they just let him go anyway.”

The following is from the appeal decision of the Murmansk Regional Court:

“During the beating, T. (Tarasov, Timchenko’s friend. — T. B.)  struck Kokorin on the arms with at least 5 blows. Then, after breaking off a wooden leg from the table, he struck him once in the head area and delivered 2 more blows to his arms and legs. Timchenko then took his turn and using the table leg, also struck Kokorin at least 10 times on his arms, legs and head while constantly asking about the location of his brother and V., Then he demanded that Kokorin call him on the phone. When he tried to make the phone call, T. hit him 3 times with a table leg on the legs. Then Timchenko, removing an iron poker from the stove, struck him with the poker at least 25 times, hitting him on the arms which he was using to protect head and legs that he pulled up to his chest. One of the blows broke a toe on his left foot. In addition, Timchenko took away his phone and smashed it with the poker, suspecting that he was being recorded on the dictaphone. T. also struck him at least 10 times on the arms with the poker… According to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination, K. had the following injuries: abrasions of the occipital region; bruises of the middle third of the left forearm and the second toe of the left foot; bruised wounds of the left parietal region, the middle third of the left forearm, both hands, the middle third of the left shin, both feet; and there is an open fracture of the main phalanx of the second toe of the left foot.”

There is also a curious detail in the court documents that says the older brother was hiding in the next room the whole time and remained there even during his younger brother’s beating. There were other guys there too but no one fought back. 

Timchenko was charged with and convicted of breaking Article 112 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, “Intentional infliction of moderate harm to someone’s health”. He received  2 years in a penal colony. A year later, he was released on parole. His accomplice Tarasov had been stabbed by his own father during that time. This was after another drunken incident by Mikhail where his father felt he was frightening his little granddaughter. The father was given 6 years in a maximum security prison. The court verdict mentions that Tarasov had been repeatedly beating his cohabitant and mother for many years and had even tried to pour boiling water over his mother. He was never tried for any of this during his lifetime.

Another person from the same circle is Alexey Chukchin, nicknamed Lala. He was with Timchenko during the stabbing. He had just been released early from the colony a couple of days before the New Year. He was supposed to spend almost 5 years there for a 2018 conviction for stabbing three people in one evening. One of the reasons for the stabbings was that one of the victims had refused to bring some refreshments to Viktor Timchenko in the old part of Umba when he called him on the phone. They found him and some friends on the square near the recreation center. They came with two cars to sort things out. Chukchin came out with a knife in his hands and shouted: “I’ll cut everyone!” The victim went down alone. The rest of his friends witnessed this and then got out of there as quickly as they could.

Chukchin is alleged by eyewitnesses to have been running around drunk with a knife and threatening people on New Year’s eve. Of course no one even tried to take him to the police. 

In the bar, Chukchin approached Maxim Tyulkov, ran his hand over his stomach with the words: “It’s been a while since somebody’s cut you with a knife, hasn’t it?”

He said “he’d catch him with the fish in his hands”

“It seems to me that they started becoming more brazen eight years ago, more cruel,” says Natalia Kameneva, “They have grown fat with their connections and everything else. They started putting more serious pressure on everyone. They liked settling their business. It all started with what you could call drunken hooliganism. They would fight and then run away and things would sort themselves out. But then it all grew more and more disturbing. They were like a cancerous lump that is allowed to grow. They knew they’d never be punished.”  

Pensioner Tatiana Smolina says that her ex-husband lost his apartment after getting involved with Timchenko. The man was a drinker and according to neighbors, after the divorce they began to bring him alcohol. When the bailiffs evicted him from the house, he told his ex-wife that he had sold the apartment for 50 thousand.

“But this was a lie because he didn’t get any money. He probably owed them this money for the vodka. The apartment went to Timchenko and they soon sold it. I went to the prosecutor about this personally but Sasha and I were already divorced. They told me that he had to come and write the complaint himself. But when I told him this, he just said that if he did, they’d kill him.”

Another resident of Umba, “R”, says that the members of the group began introducing the disgusting prison custom of mockery into their rural lives. For obvious reasons, the victims felt they could not contact the police. Violence was a good way to scare people into compliance. No one in the village where a good half had served time wanted to become left out.

“I do not know that anyone directly paid them tributes. It was more like nobody wanted to quarrel with them. Taxi drivers, for example, did not take their money for trips and in the stores, they could get what they demanded for free just so there would be no conflict.” 

The locals speak unanimously about this group and include great details about shocking incidents. Obviously everyone in the village knows all about these things except for those who, because of their status and position, are supposed to investigate such things. So, the brothers’ confidence in their own impunity grew because, as many here believe, they had a solid foundation. Even in the cases when complaints were filed or, even more so, when the police themselves suffered, nothing seemed to guarantee significant consequences.

Vladimir in one of the police recordings transparently hints to one of his opponents that “he would catch him with the fish in his hands.” It meant that he could send the FSB after him any time he wanted.  

In 2014, a note appeared in the newspaper of the regional Murmansk Communist Party under the headline “Terskaya-Kushchevka”. It reported that a certain “local fraternity” was trying to shake down the visiting “social housing” builders, who were building emergency resettlement housing. The head of the settlement, communist Anatoly Khmelentsov, was threatened and then had his car burned. In response, the district prosecutor stated in the pages of a local newspaper that Khmelentsov had not officially used the word “threatened”. The police eventually decided that these were false charges, no one had threatened the builders, nothing needed to be done and that was the end of the matter.

It is not just idle talk that most have suspicions that the brothers, or at least one of them, were firmly cooperating as informants with certain high ranking law enforcement officials. However, other than serving the function of being valuable informants, it is really difficult to explain such impunity for people who have neither the political weight, social status or even the capital to justify such privilege.

“We wanted to be heard”

The next time the events in Umba had any resonance was last summer. Two collective appeals from residents were sent to Vladimir Putin. Both were published online one after another. In the first video, only two people speak and neither covers their faces. In the second video, a lot of people were willing to join in. The point of either video was a plea for Putin to take measures against the Timchenko brothers for keeping the village in fear. 

Yuri Kovalev is in a wheelchair and is one of the heroes of the video. During the 10-minute video, he says that Viktor Timchenko and Mikhail Tarasov broke windows in his house and broke down the doors. He made a police report but In response, police from Kandalaksha refused to initiate any criminal proceedings.

“There were a lot of statements to the police. Many people wrote complaints but nothing ever happened. What were we supposed to do? In the summer, some FSB people came from Moscow. They spoke to us like sensible people and we told them everything. But nothing happened there either. And by this time, many people were getting injured. They were beating people and taking them off somewhere. Merchants were intimidated too. Even if they closed the store and went home, they would come to their houses and knock down the doors. They would get them out of bed to open the store. And then they would just take whatever alcohol and cigarettes they wanted for free. They keep us all in constant fear.

Obviously they are collaborating with someone. Maybe it is with the police or maybe with someone else. We are turning to the president because we want to be heard and seen about what is happening here.”

Galina Pushkova was another participant in the video message.

“Vitya Timchenko and I used to talk. But one day when I had a company, he wanted to come in. I went outside and told him rather bluntly that no one there wanted to see him. But then he grabbed me and put me in a car. He took me to the forest and started beating me there. I filmed the beatings and then I filed a lawsuit. But when he heard, he threatened to bring a lot of witnesses who would say that I myself was drunk and fell. I had to cancel the complaint.” 

Galina’s brother is a local businessman and also talks about the beatings in the video and asks the president to take action.

“One of the brothers beat me but I didn’t go to the police because it’s all pointless. He threatened to stab me, my family, my wife, my nieces and my brother,” 

Another echoed him. “They scared us,”  and then a third says, “We just don’t know who to turn to anymore. Send investigators from Moscow and let them see for themselves. Come to the village yourself and find out!”

After the video message, according to Yuri Kovalev, those who appeared on camera were told that “they will be killed and the issue will be resolved.” He is sure that if there had not been a folding knife in the pocket of Maxim Tyulkov’s fishing jacket that night, someone else would have done the job. The village had stopped hoping for the help of the state or the law.

Another resident of Umba, “A” has his own recollections.

“Many people were afraid to fight with Vitya because he was a scumbag. He broke people younger than himself. They couldn’t do anything with them. They squeezed people in the fishing areas. They were just intimidating.” 

And from another local entrepreneur:

“When they were sober, they were nothing. But when they were drunk, you couldn’t go walking along the Umba. Nobody would. No one wanted to run into them drunk. No, they were not a gang, of course. It wasn’t like that. They were like a pack of wild dogs.”

The videos were somewhat successful at first. Some time later, FSB officers arrived in Umba and detained five people including Viktor Timchenko. In the arrest, live grenades and weapons were seized. But then they just let them go.

“I guess they couldn’t put the squeeze on Maximka.”

The truth now is that Maxim Tyulkov’s whole life in Umba is hanging by a thread and his fate is now in the hands of a lawyer. 

“I didn’t expect this. It feels like the whole village has breathed a collective sigh,“ says Maxim’s wife. She has not yet told her sons what happened to her father and she doesn’t know how to do it.

The family was celebrating the New Year in the “Owl”. This is the bar that is across the street from the Tyulkovs’ house. Now the “Owl” is closed. When asked to talk about the incident, the woman cleaning the snow at the door waved us away: “I don’t know when they will open. There was a murder here but I don’t know anything, I haven’t seen anything.”

It all happened five minutes before the Tyulkovs were about to leave the bar. Maxim went out to smoke while waiting for his wife and a relative to finish dancing and get dressed. When the women came out of the club, it was already over.

Maxim Tyulkov, by the way, also has a criminal record. In 2012, after being detained, he hit an operational duty officer several times. He received three and a half years probation for this. He worked as a paratrooper-firefighter until last spring when he had to leave for health reasons. Tulkov was found to have cancer and had part of a kidney removed. He has been moonlighting as a milk truck driver for the state farm. He had just had an interview and found a good job in another city. 

According to his wife, he had no open conflicts with Timchenko. He is however, just one of those people who are not afraid. He can put someone in their place. 

“I guess they couldn’t put the squeeze on Maximka. They tried to provoke him more than once, I know that for sure. They called. They told him nasty things.”

There is another story here that Tyulkov’s relatives ignore. A few years ago, Tyulkov’s 68-year-old father Anatoly Sorokoumov had a fight with Viktor Timchenko in Eastern Munozer. Both ended up with stab wounds but the pensioner was named as a suspect. Ironically, this was the case that got his nephew, Alexey Sorokoumov, put away for giving false information. Aleksei was the one who had unsuccessfully tried to get Timchenko off from the charge of beating the policeman. 

Umba is a small village and almost everybody here is related to each other somehow. This would also be true for the murdered and the murderers and the humiliated and the offenders. They have to resolve conflicts as best as they can. They know they cannot count on the state who has long ago forgotten about them. A few years ago, another Sorokoumov, Yuri, Maxim Tyulkov’s uncle, shot two newcomers with a gun at his fishing tone. He believed that they were poachers. And then he shot himself. He was 60 years old. On the funeral wreath, the villagers wrote: “To the owner of his land and a proud Pomor.”

According to an unofficial version that is very common in Umba, out in front of the bar, Viktor Timchenko promised Maxim Tyulkov that he would “lower” both him and his father into the ground and Tyulkov couldn’t stand it anymore. Perhaps these circumstances, regardless of whether or not  it took place in reality, had some influence on the prosecutor. Tulkov was charged with premeditated murder despite the fact that Timchenko had chances to survive after the skirmish.

In the video, which is at the disposal of the Novaya Gazeta, even with his injuries, Victor is still waving his fists with vigor. Bystanders at first only stood around speaking about the relationship of these two men. Once that was solved, the victim’s brother went to the car for a bat. Only after everyone had calmed down was an ambulance called for the wounded man. Maxim Tyulkov stabbed Viktor Timchenko at 4 a.m. The victim, as eyewitnesses of the events tell me, was on the operating table about four hours later. A writer from the investigative committee wrote that the victim received “timely medical care” in the press release.

The cause of death, as reported to Novaya by the Murmansk region inspection bureau, is blood loss and traumatic shock. Under such circumstances, the 4th part of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, “Causing harm to someone’s health resulting in death by negligence” is usually the law called into question and this was the charge when the case was initially reported by the department. Tyulkov has however been charged instead under article 105 for premeditated murder and this is a completely different term.