18-year-old Evgeny Losevsky, who lived in the village of Detskoselsky in the Pushkinsky district of St. Petersburg, disappeared in November 2009. Since then, his mother, Inna Bardysheva, has not been able to find her son, either alive or dead. In the fall of 2020, investigators admitted that he had been murdered, although the body was never found. Where it is located, only three men accused today of kidnapping and murdering Losevsky can know: 37-year-old Maxim Fateev, 39-year-old Anton Kozlov, 42-year-old Sergei Selyutsky. For twelve years they lived in the same village with Zhenya's parents: they worked, rested, got married, had children. The whole village knew about what happened to Losevsky, and that it was Fateev, Kozlov and Selyutsky who were the last who met him during his lifetime and entered into a conflict. Despite this, all three believed that punishment would never overtake them.
On January 25, Fateev, Kozlov and Selyutsky appeared before the court. They do not admit guilt. Each faces up to 15 years in prison.
Defendants in the courtroom. Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta
“I'll be back soon”
Inna Bardysheva divorced her husband when her son was five years old. She raised him alone until the age of 11, until she married a second time. Zhenya, according to the recollections of his friends and acquaintances, was calm, non-confrontational, kind, sympathetic. In addition to the regular school, he graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium of Arts. Akhmatova in the guitar class, and then — the automechanical lyceum. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer, he was a first-year student at the Faculty of Law.
On the evening of November 11, 2009, Eugene and his friends saw off a former classmate to the army. Around midnight, Zhenya went home for a guitar. He explained to his parents that the guys asked him to play and sing. He promised: «I'll be back soon, I'm there.»
“I fell asleep peacefully,” says Inna. “Nothing bothered me at the time. We never had sleepovers away from home. At times, Zhenya returned late, but I was always aware of where and with whom he was. The village is small, I knew their whole company — boys and girls, they often came to visit us. I knew many of my parents. I had no fear that anything might happen. And at 7.30 in the morning I woke up and saw: my son did not come. I run into his room, everything is getting colder inside, and some kind of wind is coming towards me. I was scared.
Zhenya Losevsky. Photos from the family archive
Mother rushed to call everyone who had been with Zhenya the day before, to find out where he was. I learned that after the gatherings, Eugene and his friend Roman saw off their friend Ilmira. On the way, in the courtyard of residential buildings on the Kolpino highway, they ran into Fateev, Kozlov and Selyutsky. As it turned out later, they spent that evening at a party, managed to drink enough and were going to go «for more». The trio stood near the Volkswagen Transporter car, deciding where to go for vodka.
— According to the guys, Inna says, Zhenya, passing by, accidentally touched the mirror of a foreign car. Didn't hurt. Nevertheless, one of the men began to swear and shout something like: “You first make money on your car!”. Then his friends joined in the showdown. They grabbed the son by the hood, pushed him into a minibus and took him away.
No one ever saw Evgeny again. Neither alive nor dead.
Inna shows pictures of her son. Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta
“Well, what did you do there?”
“My search for my son began on the morning of November 12,” continues Bardysheva. — For half a day I tried to figure out who they are — Kozlov, Fateev, Selyutsky, and what happened between them and Zhenya? Roman and Ilmira told me everything that happened before their eyes. Then I rushed to the precinct. He sits cross-legged, husks seeds and sips lazily like this: “well, bring them here, we’ll figure it out.” Inna found out where Kozlov lives. Came here with my husband.
Anton Kozlov. Photo from personal archive
“Kozlov,” the woman recalls, “came out to us rumpled, with crazy eyes. In the hallway were his gray sneakers, all muddy and bloody. The husband helped bring Kozlov to the district police officer. He met him as an old acquaintance: “Well, what did you do there?”. Kozlov said that there was nothing, they say, they quarreled, put the guy in the car, drove a little and let him out right there, in the village.
Fateev and Selyutsky, interviewed later, adhered to the same version. Fateev referred to the fact that Zhenya behaved badly, was very noisy, shouted loudly, prevented people from sleeping,
therefore, they decided to take him out to the fields — «to air and teach the mind.»
Losevsky's parents demanded that the «teachers» show them the patch on which they allegedly landed Zhenya. There were surveillance cameras. Not immediately, but the family managed to get the police to seize the videos from them and study them. On the night of November 11-12, a Volkswagen Transporter drove through the indicated place, but not a single car stopped there and did not drop anyone off. None!
Anton Kozlov in court. Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta
The presence of video recordings radically changed the defensive tactics of Fateev, Kozlov and Selyutsky. The men began to claim that they took Yevgeny a little further — to the fields of the Detskoselsky state farm and left him there. And on November 12, and many times in the following months, Zhenya's parents, friends and acquaintances came to these fields in search. To no avail.
“Shattered the system”
On November 18, 2009, a criminal case was initiated on the fact of Losevsky's disappearance under Part 1 of Art. 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation «Murder». To do this, Inna had to go twice to the Pushkin police department, write a statement, reach out to the leadership. But to initiate a case does not mean to investigate. Nothing that needed to be done in hot pursuit, quickly and efficiently, was not done by the investigation.
— First Investigator Pyotr Isaikin (currently on the federal wanted list for bringing prohibited substances to the pre-trial detention center. — N.P.) made every effort to ensure that the case was not disclosed, — says Bardysheva. — The clothes in which the suspects were on the night of the crime, the investigator asked them to bring him to him a week later.
“I am not a lawyer, not an investigator, but I watch films and see that material evidence is usually seized, and they are not asked to bring them by alleged criminals.”
As a result, among the confiscated things were not those in which Fateev, Kozlov and Selyutsky were seen on the night of November 12 by witnesses. Isaikin was not embarrassed by the apparently contradictory initial testimonies of the detainees. He ignored reports from witnesses about threats and intimidation from suspects. class=»SingleImage_caption__2bWvj»>
Maxim Fateev in court. Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta
Not surprisingly, six months later, the investigation came to the conclusion that the collected evidence of the involvement of the above persons in the crime against Losevsky is not enough. On July 18, 2010, the criminal prosecution of Selyutsky, Fateev and Kozlov, who previously had the status of suspects, was terminated, and the investigation of the case was suspended for the first time.
In just 12 years, it was suspended 12 times and at least 20 once passed from the investigator to the investigator, but did not stop. One of the reasons is the persistence of Zhenya's mother.
“I didn’t have a lawyer at that time,” Inna says. There was no one to teach or advise what to do. I simply wrote complaints like a fan and sent them at random to all the leaders in St. Petersburg and Moscow. I received replies in response, but I did not stop writing.
Since 2009, Bardysheva has sent so many appeals to various authorities that today they alone make up two volumes of the criminal case (11 volumes in total).
< p> — One of the investigators, — Inna recalls, — told me: «you managed to undermine the system.»
“Why do we need such a system that needs to be shaken?”
Inna looks at the suspects involved in the disappearance her son Zhenya through the glass of the «aquarium». Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta
Help yourself
Never over the years, only the mother’s own investigation of the mother who lost her son has been suspended.
— When I realized that there was nowhere to wait for help, I began to conduct my own investigation. I had to do it. From hopelessness. I went with a photograph to all the apartments in the village. I asked. My husband and I traveled all the roads adjacent to the area in the fields where Zhenya was supposedly abandoned. We interviewed people in roadside cafes, shops, motels, gas stations.
Until the fall of 2009, Bardysheva did not have her own page on the VKontakte social network. After the disappearance of her son, she created her own page and began to lead a group on the social network dedicated to the investigation of the case and the search for Zhenya. The search group of Yevgeny Losevsky is still active, helping in the search for missing people.
— Information also flocked to me, — Inna continues, — I collected it bit by bit. Through acquaintances and strangers, someone heard something, someone saw something. So in the summer of 2020, one resident of the village told me that during a festive feast, one of the suspects confessed to her that Zhenya was kidnapped and told how it really happened.
Inna's husband is speaking in court. Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta
With this information, Bardysheva went to the investigator. Work on the criminal case was resumed and entrusted to the most experienced employees of the Department for Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg.
Hidden
On September 5, 2020, on suspicion of the kidnapping and murder of Losevsky, criminal investigation operatives detained and took into custody Fateev, Kozlov and Selyutsky. Two days earlier, on September 3, Selyutsky confessed. He told the investigators in detail about how the conflict happened, how Yevgeny was pushed into the car, taken to the fields of the Detskoselsky state farm, and also about what happened next.
Selyutsky — the only one — gave a confession, and then retracted it. Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta
According to the testimony of Selyutsky, in the fields, Fateev took Losevsky out of the car. On the street, they swore loudly, and Fateev, being much stronger than Zhenya, inflicted at least five blows to his head and one to the chest area. The guy fell to the ground and didn't get up again. Realizing that Losevsky had been killed, these three took the body to the nearest ditch, dumped it there and threw it with branches and dry grass. Then all three returned to Fateev's apartment, where, according to Selyutsky, he got drunk and went to bed. Woke up at nine in the morning. There was no one in the apartment. Selyutsky looked out the window and saw how the car was parked, from which Fateev and Kozlov were getting out.
Selyutsky did not ask where they went and why, but suggests that the accomplices, while he was sleeping, hid Losevsky's body.
They themselves did not tell him anything about this. During the investigative experiment, Selyutsky showed the place where Yevgeny's body was originally thrown. The detectives did not find the remains there.