Lieutenant Colonel Irek Magasumov, who received the title of Hero of Russia in early August, is suspected of murder by negligence of a girl in Lugansk, sources of the Mash telegram channel report. This information was also confirmed to Business Online by the officer’s wife.
As Mash writes, on August 11, two Luhansk women met senior lieutenant Pavel Yaskevich and lieutenant colonel Irek Magasumov in a bar. Before the war in Ukraine, their brigade was stationed in the Kemerovo region. During the meeting, the girls asked the military to show them a Makarov pistol.
According to the telegram channel, while holstering his weapon, one of the officers accidentally shot an 18-year-old girl. According to Magasumov's defense, it was Yaskevich. The lieutenant colonel allegedly left the bar a few minutes before the shooting because a colleague, “who had gotten to the bottom of five guys with tattoos, called him and asked for help.”
A resident of Lugansk died in an ambulance, and senior lieutenant Yaskevich wrote a confession and admitted to her murder. Witnesses questioned by the investigation, whose testimony was reviewed by Business Online journalists, also claim that Magasumov was in a different place at the time of the shot.
According to the lieutenant colonel himself, he, Yaskevich and two girls were relaxing in the bar, and when it closed, they continued communicating on a bench next to the establishment. The Luhansk woman, who was subsequently killed, saw Magasumov’s gun and said that she was a police school cadet and asked to shoot. They stepped aside and the girl fired twice. Later, as the lieutenant colonel told investigators, he took the weapon from her, gave it to Yaskevich, and went off to help his friend.
During the first interrogation, Magasumov said that he learned about the murder in the morning from his colleague. A few days later, as Business Online writes, he told investigators a different version: Yaskevich called him that same night and admitted that he “did something weird with the gun.” Witnesses who were near the cafe at that moment say that they allegedly heard two shots at first, and after a while another one.
Yaskevich’s colleagues said that he ran into the unit’s location in a panic “a little after midnight.” In a frightened voice, he allegedly said that “he killed the chick along the way.”
Business Online writes that the friend of the murdered woman, who was sitting next to her at that moment, identified Magasumov as the shooter. According to Mash, on September 16, the lieutenant colonel was charged.
Governor of the Kemerovo region Sergei Tsivilev and State Duma deputy from United Russia Alexander Khinshtein stood up for Magasumov. The first wrote in his Telegram channel that he was not indifferent to the “honor and good name” of the military man, and also asked the chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, to take the matter under personal control. The second reported that Magasumov has been in a pre-trial detention center since August, and in the case there are “a lot of questions that cast doubt on the officer’s involvement in an accidental murder.”
Vladimir Putin awarded Magasumov the star of Hero of Russia on August 2. Why exactly the officer received this rank is unknown. Previously, the military man was awarded the Order of Courage three times.