Artur Ryno was a student of icon painting in Moscow when he was detained in April 2007 on suspicion of killing an Armenian businessman. Within weeks he had told investigators that he had killed 37 people over the previous months, many of them, he said, together with a fellow student, Pavel Skachevsky. Russian prosecutors later charged the two as organizers of a group of nine young people accused of 20 murders and 12 attempted murders in Moscow between August 2006 and October 2007, all of them attacks on people the group took to be non-Slavic.
A jury at the Moscow City Court found seven of the nine guilty in December 2008. Ryno and Skachevsky, minors when the crimes were committed, each received ten years in a general-regime colony, the most a Russian court could impose for crimes committed by a juvenile. Rights monitors called the sentences inadequate for the crimes. Two further trials, in 2010 and 2011, convicted the two of more attacks and one more killing, but the law did not allow their terms to grow. According to reports in July 2026, Ryno was released in 2017.
Ryno grew up in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals. E1.ru, the city's news site, reported in 2026 that he was born there in 1989. Lenta.ru, in a long profile published in February 2011, reported that his father died when Ryno was three.
He moved between at least three schools, according to the same profile. People who knew him then described a quiet, kind boy whom neighbors trusted to look after their children. The worst anyone recalled, Lenta.ru wrote, were a black headband, fingerless gloves and a shaved head before his school graduation. Shortly before he finished school he suffered a head injury and afterward had headaches.
After the eleventh grade he went to Moscow to study. The reports of 2007 and 2008 describe him as a student at the Kisselyov School of Icon Painting; Lenta.ru in 2011 and the Yekaterinburg and Moscow regional sites in 2026 name the Moscow art college of applied art. The college's director told Lenta.ru that Ryno's mother had asked to be allowed to live with him in the student hostel and had been refused. A teacher recalled a quarrel over damage to a balcony, in which Ryno answered him, in the profile's words, that it was none of his business and that he would one day light a candle on the teacher's grave.
Skachevsky, the second organizer, grew up in Moscow in a family of athletes, according to Lenta.ru. He had finished school with a gold medal, held the title of master of sport in alpine skiing, according to MSK1.RU, and was a student at the Russian State University of Physical Culture when he was detained. Acquaintances described him, too, as kind and serious. When Ryno and Skachevsky were first detained, both were reported to be 18; some trial reports in 2008 gave Ryno's age as 17.
Ryno told investigators that he began on August 21, 2006, the day a bomb exploded at a Moscow market and killed 13 people, The Moscow Times reported in 2008; the paper did not say whether the two events were connected. The prosecution's case covered the period from August 2006 to October 2007.
According to prosecutors, the group was influenced by the idea, spread by illegal youth organizations, that Russians were an exclusive nation and people of non-Slavic origin were inferior, and its members came together to kill people from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. SOVA Center, the Moscow monitoring group, summarized the prosecution's account in July 2008. Court reports later listed the victims of the first case as citizens of Russia, Tajikistan, China and Azerbaijan. The Southern Poverty Law Center, in its 2009 report on the verdict, wrote that most of the dead were from China or Tajikistan and that the group chose them for their Asian or dark-skinned appearance.
The attacks were carried out by several young men together, with knives, on people they encountered in the street. Radio Svoboda, the Russian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported in December 2008 that the group filmed attacks on video. RFE/RL reported that some of the killings were posted on the internet. The prosecution's total was 20 murders and 12 attempted murders; one court report put it as 33 attacks, 19 of them fatal, and another as 32 attacks.
The names of most of the victims were never made public, and the trial was held behind closed doors. The case that led to the arrests was the one exception.
Karen Abramyan, 46, was an Armenian businessman in Moscow. MSK1.RU, the Moscow city news site, described him in 2026 as the general director of an insurance company. He was attacked in southwest Moscow on April 17, 2007, and died in hospital, Lenta.ru reported. Before he died, he said he had been attacked by three young men with shaved heads in high laced boots who shouted nationalist slogans.
A surveillance camera recorded the attack. According to Lenta.ru, which relied on the newspaper Vremya Novostej and an unnamed source in the prosecutor's office, the two suspects were detained soon afterward on the strength of witness statements. His widow spoke about the attack to MSK1.RU in 2026. MSK1.RU listed his killing among the crimes proven against the gang.
Ryno and Skachevsky were detained in mid-April 2007. The case was handled by the prosecutor's office of Moscow's South-Western district.
At the end of May 2007 the Moscow press reported that Ryno had confessed. After investigators showed him the footage of the attack on Abramyan, he began to describe a series of killings since August 2006 in different parts of Moscow, Lenta.ru reported on May 28, 2007. He named 37 victims. About 20 of the killings, he said, had been carried out together with Skachevsky. He gave the dates and places only roughly, and investigators at first doubted him, Caucasian Knot reported; by the end of May some of his statements had been confirmed. Skachevsky denied any part in the killings.
Officials were cautious. An investigator told Interfax that it was too early to say the detained men had committed so many killings, Radio Svoboda reported on May 29, 2007. Caucasian Knot reported the same day that law enforcement had not confirmed the confession to 37 nationalist killings, and that investigators at that stage regarded the attacks as hooliganism, because the two men belonged to no nationalist organization. Moscow investigators were checking whether the two students could be linked to other, similar attacks.
Lenta.ru later wrote that Ryno had at one point spoken of about 40 killings. He later retracted his confession, according to MSK1.RU.
The investigation widened to other members of the group. On July 1, 2008, the Moscow prosecutor's office sent the case to the Moscow City Court. SOVA Center reported that nine people were accused, with Ryno and Skachevsky named as organizers, and that the group included a 15-year-old.
The charges included murder of two or more people by an organized group, with hooligan motives and motives of racial hatred (article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code); attempted murder of two or more people (articles 30 and 105); incitement of hatred with the use of violence by an organized group (article 282); and hooliganism by an organized group (article 213). Some of the accused also faced robbery charges.
At a preliminary hearing on July 24, 2008, the court granted the defense's request to try the case behind closed doors because minors were among the defendants, Caucasian Knot reported, citing the court's press service. The case went to a jury.
The trial opened at the Moscow City Court on October 1, 2008. According to Interfax, which cited an unnamed participant, Ryno and Skachevsky fully admitted their guilt at the closed hearing. Interfax reported that Ryno faced 29 of the case's episodes and Skachevsky 27; Caucasian Knot later reported that Skachevsky was accused of 29 episodes, the most of any defendant. Three other defendants admitted part of the charges, and two denied any involvement.
All of the accused except one were under 18 when the crimes were committed, according to Interfax. The only woman among them, then 22, was accused by investigators of filming attacks; she denied the charge. Prosecutors asked for terms of up to ten years in a general-regime colony, according to Pravo.ru, and defense lawyers asked for leniency and terms of no more than six years.
The verdict came on December 2, 2008. The jury found Ryno guilty unanimously and without leniency, and found Skachevsky guilty by a vote of nine, Caucasian Knot reported. Five other defendants were found guilty with a recommendation of leniency, which barred life sentences for them and capped their terms at two-thirds of the maximum. The jury split evenly on the two remaining defendants, which under the law meant acquittal, and they were released in the courtroom. The court's press secretary told ITAR-TASS that the jury had been unanimous on all other points.
During the closed trial, RFE/RL reported, the defendants said they had been on a mission to "cleanse Russian blood."
Judge Pyotr Shtunder of the Moscow City Court passed sentence on December 15, 2008. Ryno and Skachevsky each received ten years in a general-regime colony, the maximum because both had been minors when they committed the crimes. The other five received terms from six to 20 years; the oldest, aged 20, received the longest sentence. The court upheld two civil claims and ordered payments of 1 million and 3 million rubles to the families of two victims. The defendants waited for the sentence in a glass cage under heavy guard, and television footage showed them smiling, The Moscow Times reported.
Ryno's lawyer, Artem Timushev, told The Moscow Times, "We are satisfied with the sentence," and said he would appeal only the 4 million ruble award. Dmitry Agranovsky, who represented Skachevsky in that trial, said he would discuss an appeal with his client. A defense lawyer told RFE/RL that the outcome was a success because none of the adult defendants had received life imprisonment.
Galina Kozhevnikova of SOVA Center called the sentences "derisory" and noted that the defendants could be released early. Speaking to Radio Svoboda, she said they would probably serve about half their terms and could come out as "heroes" with the standing to lead the neo-Nazi movement, and that the group had already inspired imitators. A legal scholar who specializes in countering extremism told the same program that the sentence was unjust but that the court could not give minors more. According to SOVA, racially motivated attacks had killed at least 86 people in Russia in 2008.
The Supreme Court of Russia rejected both the defense appeals and the prosecutor's protest, and the verdict came into force in April 2009, Pravo.ru reported.
Other members of the group were tried separately. On October 13, 2009, the Moscow City Court sentenced four young men, minors at the time of their crimes, for two killings and two attempted killings of people "of non-Slavic appearance" in Moscow between January and March 2007, Interfax reported. Their terms ranged from five to nine years. In April 2010 the Supreme Court removed the incitement-of-hatred charge from all four and shortened each term.
Three attacks from the original series had been separated from the main case for procedural reasons. The new trial began in March 2010. At a hearing on March 9, according to the court's press service as quoted by ITAR-TASS, Ryno partially admitted his guilt and Skachevsky fully admitted his; a co-defendant denied any involvement.
On March 25, 2010, a jury found Ryno and Skachevsky guilty on all the charges against them, Pravo.ru reported. The case concerned an attack on a citizen of Armenia in a town near Moscow on October 11, 2006, and attacks on a citizen of Uzbekistan on January 22, 2007 and on a citizen of Tajikistan on March 9, 2007, both in Moscow. Pravo.ru described the charges as attempted murder on grounds of national hatred; Lenta.ru later described all three as killings.
On April 8, 2010, the court sentenced them. Because all three attacks were committed before they turned 18, the court could not raise their terms, which remained ten years each. Their co-defendant received an additional two years.
The judge who passed that sentence was shot dead in Moscow four days later, on April 12, 2010. Investigators said they treated a link to ultranationalist groups as their main line of inquiry, Interfax reported. Lawyers in the Ryno case rejected the idea of a link to their clients. Artem Timushev told Pravo.ru that it was mistaken, since the 2010 trial had been largely a formality that could not change the fate of Ryno and Skachevsky. Galina Kozhevnikova made the same point to Radio Svoboda: the case had added nothing to their sentences.
The defense appealed, arguing among other things that the prosecutor had told the jury about the earlier convictions, that the court had refused to exclude two jurors whom the defense called biased because they were not ethnic Russians, and that knives unrelated to the case had been admitted as evidence. On September 9, 2010, the Supreme Court rejected the appeals and the prosecutor's protest and left the sentences in place. Interfax reported that the two would soon be transferred to the colonies where they were to serve their terms. Kozhevnikova told Radio Svoboda that day that the case was a strange one: the authorities were showing that every killing Ryno had claimed would be checked, yet he would still serve no more than ten years.
On November 25, 2010, investigators opened another murder case against Ryno and Skachevsky, according to Caucasian Knot, which cited an unnamed law enforcement source. It concerned the killing of a man on April 4, 2007 in eastern Moscow. Lenta.ru gave his age as 37; Caucasian Knot, citing the case file, gave it as 40. Another man had earlier been convicted of that killing in error, Lenta.ru reported.
Both defendants admitted their guilt. A jury found them guilty on February 18, 2011, their lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky said. On February 24, 2011, the Moscow City Court gave each five years for the killing and combined it with the earlier sentence; the total remained ten years, Lenta.ru reported. The victim's widow sought compensation, which the court sent to a separate civil hearing. During the proceedings Ryno called the judge "non-Russian," according to Lenta.ru, which headlined its account with the observation that three times ten still made ten.
The Moscow and Yekaterinburg city news sites MSK1.RU and E1.ru reported in July 2026 that Ryno was released in 2017. No release date for Skachevsky has been reported; MSK1.RU wrote that the group's leaders were free.
The number of killings. Ryno first told investigators he had killed 37 people, and later spoke of about 40, according to Lenta.ru. He later retracted his confession, according to MSK1.RU. The courts convicted the group of 20 murders in the first case and of further attacks and one killing in later cases. The other killings he described were not tried, and his confession stands as his own claim.
The count in the first case. Most reports give 20 murders and 12 attempted murders. Pravo.ru reported in 2008 that 19 of 33 attacks were fatal, and again in 2010 that the first verdict covered 19 murders.
His personal share. Interfax reported in October 2008 that he faced 29 of the episodes; Caucasian Knot reported that Skachevsky faced 29, the most of anyone. No separate count has been published of the killings for which the jury held Ryno personally responsible.
The date of arrest. Reports in 2007 and 2008 place the detentions in mid-April 2007, soon after the Abramyan attack. Lenta.ru's 2011 profile gives October 2007.
His age. Reports in 2007 gave his age as 18; some trial reports in 2008 gave 17.
The second case. Pravo.ru described the three attacks tried in 2010 as attempted murders; Lenta.ru described them as killings.
The motive. In May 2007 investigators described the attacks as hooliganism, because the suspects belonged to no nationalist organization. The charges and the jury's verdicts included motives of racial and national hatred.
1989: Born in Yekaterinburg, according to E1.ru.
August 21, 2006: The date on which, he told investigators, the attacks began.
August 2006 to October 2007: Period of the 20 murders and 12 attempted murders charged in the first case.
October 11, 2006: Attack on a citizen of Armenia near Moscow (second case).
January 22, 2007: Attack on a citizen of Uzbekistan in Moscow (second case).
March 9, 2007: Attack on a citizen of Tajikistan in Moscow (second case).
April 4, 2007: Killing of a man in eastern Moscow (third case).
April 17, 2007: Karen Abramyan, 46, attacked in southwest Moscow; he died in hospital.
Mid-April 2007: Ryno and Skachevsky detained.
May 28, 2007: Moscow press reports Ryno's confession to 37 killings.
July 1, 2008: Case of nine defendants sent to the Moscow City Court.
July 24, 2008: Preliminary hearing; jury trial behind closed doors ordered.
October 1, 2008: Trial opens; Ryno and Skachevsky admit the charges.
December 2, 2008: Jury finds seven defendants guilty and acquits two.
December 15, 2008: Judge Pyotr Shtunder sentences Ryno and Skachevsky to ten years each.
April 2009: Supreme Court upholds the verdict, which comes into force.
October 13, 2009: Four more members of the group sentenced.
March 25, 2010: Jury finds Ryno and Skachevsky guilty in the second case.
April 8, 2010: Sentenced in the second case; terms stay at ten years.
April 12, 2010: The judge in the second case is shot dead in Moscow.
September 9, 2010: Supreme Court upholds the second verdict.
November 25, 2010: Third case opened.
February 18, 2011: Jury finds both guilty of one more killing.
February 24, 2011: Sentenced in the third case; the combined term remains ten years.
2017: Released, according to MSK1.RU and E1.ru (July 2026).