In the summer of 2008 four young people from the Russian city of Yaroslavl were killed over two consecutive days at the end of June. Eight young people from Yaroslavl and the nearby city of Rybinsk were brought to trial for the deaths, members of a small circle that had formed in Yaroslavl two years earlier and called itself a sect. Half of the accused had been under 18 at the time. Nikolai Ogolobyak had not. He was an adult when the killings took place, and when the Yaroslavl Regional Court delivered its verdict on July 26, 2010, he received by far the heaviest sentence in the case: 20 years in a strict-regime penal colony, the first five of them to be served under the strictest regime the code allows. He was 21.
The court convicted him of murder of two or more persons committed by a group by prior conspiracy, under paragraphs "a" and "zh" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code, together with further offenses under Article 244. His co-defendants received terms of two to ten years. One was found not criminally responsible. Three months later the Supreme Court of Russia heard the case in cassation, and Ogolobyak's term survived it intact.
For thirteen years the case belonged to the regional record of Yaroslavl. It returned to national and international attention in November 2023, when it became known that Ogolobyak, due to stay in custody until 2030, had been pardoned and freed after about six months with a Storm Z unit, one of the assault formations the Russian Defense Ministry raised from convicts for the war in Ukraine. Less than a year after his return he was in custody again in Yaroslavl, charged with an attempted drug sale.
The circle at the center of the case came together in Yaroslavl in 2006. Its founder, K.B., was 15 at the time. Ogolobyak, two years older, was among the first to join, together with A.Ch. Within about a year three more had come in: A.M., S.K. and A.V. They were teenagers from two cities on the Volga, Yaroslavl and Rybinsk, most of them born between 1989 and 1991.
By the summer of 2008 the circle had widened again. K.K., the one young woman among the eight who would later stand trial, became involved with the group that year. A.S., who came from Rybinsk, was drawn in that summer as well. All of them would face the same court.
From the beginning the investigators treated the group as what its members said it was: an informal occult youth circle whose members called themselves Satanists. That was the language the Investigative Committee used in 2008, and the court later accepted that the four deaths were the group's joint work.
Two of the four victims were killed on June 28, 2008. The other two were killed the following day. The court found that the killings had been carried out by members of the group acting together and by prior agreement, and that Ogolobyak had taken part in them.
In early July 2008 their relatives went to the police, and the case was under investigation within days.
The case passed to the investigators of the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor's Office for the Yaroslavl region, the agency that then handled serious crimes against the person. It did not take them long. Operatives soon settled on five principal suspects: Ogolobyak, K.B., A.Ch., K.K. and A.M.
At first the five denied that they even knew one another, and they had tried to cover the traces of their contacts. That position did not survive questioning. The interrogations went on for several days, and K.B., the founder of the group, was the first to confess. Once he had talked, the others gave statements in turn. To question them, the investigators first had to study the beliefs the group professed.
A.M. was the last of the five to be brought in. He was not among those first held; friends of the group named him, police went to find him in Rybinsk, and after some delay he too was taken in for questioning. The circle of suspects then widened to the three others who had been with the group that summer, until eight people in all were charged.
The charges treated the deaths as a single group act. The core count was murder of two or more persons committed by a group by prior conspiracy, under paragraphs "a" and "zh" of Part 2 of Article 105. Alongside it stood offenses under Part 2 of Article 244 and a count of theft under Part 2 of Article 158. Not every count ran against every defendant; at trial the theft count was proved against K.B. alone.
The case took a year and a half to prepare. A psychiatric examination of A.M. concluded that he was not responsible for his actions. In his case the prosecution would not ask for punishment; the question before the court would be compulsory medical measures.
By the time the investigators closed the file it ran to more than 35 volumes. On January 28, 2010, the Investigative Committee announced that the indictment had been approved and that the case against the eight had gone to court for trial on the merits.
The trial opened at the Yaroslavl Regional Court on February 24, 2010, as case No. 2-7/2010. Eight defendants were before it. The court heard the case behind closed doors from its first session. The hearings lasted five months.
The defendants' ages shaped the proceedings from the start. Ogolobyak was 21 by the time of trial. Several of the others were still teenagers, and the law that governed the punishment of crimes committed before the age of 18 hung over the whole case: whatever the court found, those who had been minors in June 2008 could not be given more than ten years.
The court sat for the last time on July 26, 2010. Before it passed sentence, the presiding judge asked the defendants whether they repented. All of them but one stayed silent. A.M. answered no.
His mental state had already been settled. The court found him not criminally responsible for his acts. He was not sentenced, and was sent instead for compulsory psychiatric treatment.
The seven others were convicted.
The Yaroslavl Regional Court convicted Ogolobyak of the group murder of the four victims by prior conspiracy, under paragraphs "a" and "zh" of Part 2 of Article 105, and of offenses under Part 1 and paragraph "a" of Part 2 of Article 244 of the Russian Criminal Code. It sentenced him to 20 years' deprivation of liberty, to be served in a strict-regime penal colony, with the first five years under the strictest regime. Part 2 of Article 105 carries eight to twenty years, with life imprisonment above that; the court gave him the longest fixed term and stopped short of life. By that sentence he was due to be freed in 2030.
The others received the following terms. K.B., the founder, convicted of organizing the murder of three people, of group murder by prior conspiracy, of an offense under Article 244 and of theft, received ten years in a general-regime colony. A.V. also received ten years in a general-regime colony. A.S. and A.Ch. received nine years each, on the same terms. K.K. was sentenced to eight years in a general-regime colony. S.K., whom the court found had not taken part in the killings themselves, received two years in a colony-settlement.
The arithmetic of the verdict was set by the law on juvenile offenders. The prosecution put it plainly at the time: ten years was the maximum the law permitted for a crime committed while under age, however many crimes there were. Ogolobyak's adulthood removed that ceiling, and his sentence was twice as long as any other in the case.
The verdict did not take effect at once. The prosecution lodged a cassation representation against it, and the case went to the Supreme Court of Russia, which then heard cassation appeals against verdicts of regional courts before they entered into force. The Supreme Court received the case on September 15, 2010, as case No. 8-O10-26. Seven of the convicted defendants were parties to it: K.B., A.V., S.K., K.K., Ogolobyak, A.S. and A.Ch.
The criminal panel of the Supreme Court heard the case on October 14, 2010, and issued its ruling the same day. For one defendant the result was a lighter sentence: K.K.'s term was cut from eight years to six. Less than a year later a district court in Yaroslavl released her from serving the rest of it.
For Ogolobyak nothing changed. His conviction stood, and so did the 20 years. With the cassation ruling the verdict entered into force.
The case did not leave the Supreme Court's docket for good. A.V. went back to it twice with supervisory complaints, decided in December 2011 and May 2012; each time the complaint was not accepted for review. Ogolobyak tried in his turn. An application he filed in June 2019 was sent down to the lower courts on June 13, 2019, for decision there. A supervisory complaint, received on August 21, 2019, was not accepted for review on August 29. A further request in his case, received in November 2021, was forwarded to the prosecutor's office on November 25, 2021. None of these filings disturbed the verdict.
The juvenile terms ran out over the following decade. A.M. left psychiatric hospital in 2011. A.S. was released from a colony in the Yaroslavl region on August 11, 2017. A.Ch., A.V. and S.K. served their terms and went free. K.B., the founder, was due for release in July 2020, and the regional penal service confirmed that he had been released.
By the summer of 2020 Ogolobyak was the only member of the group still serving his sentence, in a penal colony in the Komi Republic, with ten years to go.
The war changed his prospects. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Russian recruiters started taking convicts from the colonies for service at the front, first for the Wagner group and then for the Defense Ministry's own units. The Storm Z formations, made up of former convicts, were set up in April 2023.
Ogolobyak signed on in the spring of 2023, about six months before his release. He served with it for about six months, was pardoned, and came back to Yaroslavl on November 2, 2023, wounded. The terms and the date of the pardon decree were never made public.
The release became public on November 21, 2023, and within a day the story had moved from the regional press to the national and foreign press.
The pardon cut short a sentence that still had more than six years to run.
He did not stay free for long. By June 2024 he had been detained in Yaroslavl and was one of the accused in a criminal case of attempted sale of prohibited drugs in a significant amount, committed by a group of persons.
As of June 2024 Ogolobyak, then 34, was again in the hands of the Russian justice system in the Yaroslavl region, facing a charge that carries a long term of its own.
His release rested on different law altogether. A pardon in Russia is an act of the President, granted to an individually named person, and it can free a convict from serving the rest of a sentence, shorten it or replace it with a milder punishment. Under a law passed on June 24, 2023, convicts could be enlisted in the Armed Forces under a special form of military registration; people convicted of terrorist, extremist and sexual offenses, and political prisoners, were excluded. A conviction for murder was no bar. Recruits to the Storm Z units were promised a pardon once their service was done. A further law of November 3, 2023, passed the day after his return to Yaroslavl, set out the procedure in more detail.
2006: A group forms in Yaroslavl around a 15-year-old founder, K.B.; Ogolobyak, 17, is among its first members.
2007 to 2008: Three more members join within about a year; K.K. and A.S. become involved in 2008.
June 28, 2008: Two young people from Yaroslavl are killed.
June 29, 2008: Two more are killed.
Early July 2008: The families go to the police.
Summer 2008: Investigators of the Investigative Committee identify five principal suspects, including Ogolobyak; after several days of questioning K.B. confesses first and the others follow; eight people are eventually charged.
2008 to 2009: A.M. is found not responsible for his actions; the file grows to more than 35 volumes.
January 28, 2010: The indictment is approved and the case is sent to court.
February 24, 2010: The trial opens at the Yaroslavl Regional Court, behind closed doors.
July 26, 2010: Verdict. Ogolobyak is convicted under Article 105, Part 2 (a, zh), and Article 244 and sentenced to 20 years, strict regime; six co-defendants receive two to ten years; A.M. is found not criminally responsible.
September 15, 2010: The prosecution's cassation representation reaches the Supreme Court of Russia.
October 14, 2010: The Supreme Court hears the cassation; K.K.'s term is cut from eight years to six; Ogolobyak's sentence stands.
2011: A.M. leaves psychiatric hospital; A.V.'s first supervisory complaint is not accepted for review (December 7).
May 3, 2012: A.V.'s second supervisory complaint is not accepted for review.
August 11, 2017: A.S. is released.
June 13, 2019: Ogolobyak's application to the Supreme Court is sent to the lower courts.
August 29, 2019: His supervisory complaint is not accepted for review.
July 2020: K.B. is released; Ogolobyak is the last of the group in custody.
November 25, 2021: A further request in his case is forwarded to the prosecutor's office.
Spring 2023: Ogolobyak enlists in a Storm Z unit and serves about six months.
November 2, 2023: Pardoned, he returns to Yaroslavl.
November 21, 2023: His release becomes public.
June 2024: Detained in Yaroslavl and charged with an attempted drug sale by a group.