Uspenskaya describes witnessing crime boss murder in Surgut

Popular singer Lyubov Uspenskaya, on the show ‘Vopros Rebrом’ hosted by rapper Basta, told how she witnessed the murder of a criminal authority in Surgut. The incident happened in the lawless 1990s.

The singer came to Yugra with her young daughter and husband for a corporate event. According to her, she was given a lavish reception: they took her in a horse-drawn carriage and tried to please her in every way.

“I came to Surgut at the height of banditry. A thief in law, 30-year-old Kolya Baranov, the owner of a casino, they controlled oil, had just been released. On the eve of the day we were supposed to fly out, he went to the casino to check the tickets he had taken. And suddenly we hear an automatic burst. It was so scary. I run out into the living room, his wife is screaming, ‘Kolya has been killed,’ the singer recalls. — We run down from the fourth floor. There’s no light in the entrance. No elevator. And there on the ground, on the snow, lie six corpses. So, they (the criminals. — Ed.’s note) were sitting on the playground all day and waiting. They wanted to kill him, but I was in the way. And so they waited until Kolya left for the casino. In general, there was no face left at all. And the wife was distraught, she was screaming. I had to take the child at night, wrap her in a blanket, and carry her out through the corpses. That’s what the corporate event was like.”

The Yugra criminal authority Nikolai Baranov was shot dead on 1 May 1994 in Surgut along with his bodyguards. His brother Mikhail died in similar bloody clashes on 9 October of the same year in Moscow. Both are buried at the Chernorechenskoye Cemetery in Surgut.

Uspenskaya also said that Nikolai’s wife, many years later, came to the singer’s concert with her grown-up son and said she was entering a monastery.

Earlier, we showed the graves of criminal authorities who are buried in Surgut.