Tsapok’s Daughter Rams Child’s Room
The street-facing wall was destroyed where the Mercedes crashed through the structure.
«Gosavtoinspektsiya, the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate (GIBDD), reminds: alcohol and driving are incompatible» — that was how the first notice began about a 25-year-old woman ramming a private house in Nikolaevka — a village outside Taganrog (Rostov Oblast). It turned out the driver was Anastasia Tsapok, daughter of the Kushchyovskaya OPG (organized crime group, OPG) leader, and beside her sat a prosecutor’s son. The woman’s Mercedes drove into a children’s room and crushed a bunk bed; by a lucky chance, it was empty that night. Special correspondent 161.RU Irina Babicheva returned from Nikolaevka with an account of how the rich kids behaved after the crash and how the village took the news of the accident.
«“Nice parking job”»
Liliya Yashenkova heard a crash and looked out onto the street. It was a clear autumn night. 27 September. Liliya stepped outside the gate and saw that the neighbors’ house had been rammed — not by a drone, as regularly happens in Neklinovsky District (Rostov Oblast), but by an expensive foreign car. The impact knocked down a wall with two windows, turning the brickwork into rubble.
The car’s airbags were deflating, and it was clear: a well-groomed brunette sat behind the wheel, and next to her — a guy of about twenty. Before Liliya’s eyes, they tried to switch seats.
— The airbags started deflating, the light in the car was on — and they started shuffling around, switching places, — Liliya recalls. Witnesses understood: the pair was trying to hide who exactly had been driving at the moment of the crash. — My husband shouted: «They’re switching places! We all see what you’re doing!»
By then the house was surrounded by witnesses — neighbors and drivers traveling the same road. Many were recording what was happening on their phone cameras. Realizing they couldn’t switch, the pair got out of the car.
Posts showed her behind the wheel of different cars over several years.
Yashenkova thought the young woman was uninjured, while the passenger had a cut on his forehead. Blood ran down his face.
— Out climbed some out-of-control kids, — says Liliya. — They didn’t even ask whether anyone was hurt. They didn’t even show interest in who owned the house. They joked.
The female driver got out of the car, staggering. Yashenkova believes she was acting strangely.
— She was sort of walking, but her legs were buckling; she seemed entirely [not sober]. At the same time, I didn’t smell alcohol, even though they walked right past me, — Yashenkova says. — I’ve never seen people who are on something, never dealt with that, but there wasn’t any obvious booze reek from her.
Officials documented the Mercedes embedded in a residential structure after the impact.
After getting out of the car, the young woman took a drag on a vape. The guy walked around the car and said: «Oh, babe, nice parking job — seven mil are sticking out of the wall».
Witnesses advised the pair to switch off the engine so fuel wouldn’t spark an explosion. The car was first shut off, then the young man started it again and tried to drive out of the house. The attempt failed.
The room where no one was
That night, only one person was in the corner house on Lenin Street — Alexey, the head of the family. At the moment of the crash he was in another room and was not injured.
The homeowner’s name is known to the newsroom but has been changed for ethical reasons.
Neighbors are sure the homeowners were «very lucky».
— Because it’s a children’s room, — Liliya explains. — There’s a bunk bed there, and next to it another bed — the grandmother’s or the mother’s, I don’t know who sleeps there. But it’s a children’s room; there [were] two windows there. And there’s nothing left of the bed at all.
Satellite images of the house show that there had indeed been two windows where the section of wall was demolished.
According to the neighbor, the family had gone to visit friends because of the cold snap. After a sunny week, Rostov Oblast suddenly turned cold, and the home’s boiler hadn’t been lit. So the parents took the children to friends to keep them from getting sick. The grandfather — Alexey — stayed behind to deal with the boiler.
Neighbors said the owners left with children because the unheated house was cold.
— The owner called and said he had lit it. They answered: why drive back at night, we’ll return tomorrow. To friends or relatives, I don’t know where they went, — the neighbor says. — Good thing they didn’t come back! And the [culprits] climbed out — and they didn’t care what was where, whether anyone was alive, not alive, injured. They didn’t ask anything at all. They didn’t even ask who owned the house.
Right after the crash, the homeowner shut off the gas to prevent a leak, neighbors say.
Satellite views still showed two windows where the wall later collapsed.
«Everyone wants to know how much I’ll be paid»
The culprits began to fuss when they realized police, an ambulance, and Emergencies Ministry staff had been called, witnesses said. They then offered the owner to settle everything on the spot. He refused, and half an hour later official vehicles converged on the house.
— All emergency services arrived at the scene. According to preliminary data, both participants in the crash were under the influence of alcohol or drugs, — a 161.RU source in law enforcement said. — Both were out of it. They refused to go for a medical examination. The young woman behaved boorishly: demanded that witnesses delete videos, threatened to have them jailed, yelled: «Do you know whose daughter I am?» The young man also didn’t keep quiet. He threatened DPS road patrol officers and the homeowner himself, and offered to hush up the matter on the spot.
A red Mercedes with a gift bow appeared in earlier family photographs.
It turned out the driver was Anastasia Tsapok, daughter of Kushchyovskaya OPG leader Sergei Tsapok. The 161.RU law-enforcement source added that a 20-year-old prosecutor’s son was in the car with her.
By 1 a.m., their car was pushed out of the house. The vehicle impressed witnesses: it proved so sturdy that even the headlights survived the ram.
After that, the young woman’s mother — Anzhela-Mariya — arrived at the damaged house. Alexey’s neighbors say the gang leader’s ex-wife promised to restore the house and compensate the damage.
Anastasia posed with her mother near the red Mercedes she later drove.
— The mother of the crash culprit visited the pensioners whose house the car flew into the day before. Neighbors said the woman roughly estimated the damage and promised to pay it the next day without unnecessary fuss. But then she returned and said she was «not ready to pay right away», — a 161.RU interlocutor said. — They also said that the mother of Anastasia promised to reimburse furniture and appliances separately.
According to him, the prosecutor’s son who was in the car with Anastasia also promised the pensioners money — he said he would bring them 350,000 rubles (about $3,500 at current rates) the next day. And then he disappeared. No one compensated the homeowners for the damage.
Police took a statement from the victims and opened an administrative case. The damage was not only to the house: the car damaged a gas pipe and the electrical wiring. The house has neither gas nor electricity, the 161.RU source reported.
— The couple said that restoring the house and all related damage will cost much more than what the crash culprit’s mother promised. The full extent of the damage can be assessed after investigative actions, — the law-enforcement officer said.
Alexey’s neighbors noted that the family lives modestly — it’s unclear how they are to rebuild the house now.
— The golden youth! Do they even understand what they’ve done? — said an employee of a pharmacy a few houses down from the crash site.
The homeowner declined to comment on the crash. He said journalists had already contacted him — and Alexey has no desire to answer them.
— Why? Did this happen to you? This happened to me. You came for nothing. Everyone is interested in how much I’ll be paid. You come for that and invite me onto shows — to Malakhov [TV host], and to everyone, — Alexey told a 161.RU correspondent.
Family images highlighted her close relationship with her mother during celebrations.
The Rostov Oblast Gosavtoinspektsiya confirmed that Anastasia Tsapok was intoxicated.
«The driver of a Mercedes, born in 2000, while in a state of alcohol intoxication, failed to choose a safe speed, lost control, and drove into a residential property», the traffic inspectorate reported.
In 2016, Anastasia Tsapok posted a photo behind the wheel, captioned: «Only wind in her head». She captioned her pictures like this: «Small, mean and nasty. Hello». In 2018, she posted photos from the driver’s seat of a white Porsche. That same summer, she shared pictures of a red Mercedes with a gift bow. She hugged her mother in front of the car. «My very best», Anastasia captioned the photo. She called this car «My Red Devil».
Captions included defiant statements about living by her own rules.
That same year, she posted a video of driving along a highway with her dog’s paws on the steering wheel. A year later, Tsapok shared pictures with a Bentley, then — again the red Mercedes. Afterwards she switched to a black Mercedes with the same plate number.
«Don’t stick your holy sermons about how it’s right, how it should be, into my hell. It’s my life; it burns the way I want», the young woman wrote on social networks. She did not answer 161.RU’s call and message.
«“Couldn’t help but take pleasure”»
The OPG in Kushchyovskaya operated from the early 1990s until 2010. The gang’s creation was preceded by the death of Nikolai Tsapok’s ten-year-old son. The boy died of diphtheria, and «Uncle Kolya» undertook to raise his nephews — Nikolai and Sergei Tsapok.
Nikolai Tsapok founded the Kushchyovskaya gang before being shot in 2002.
Teenage athletes formed a group that included Vladimir Alekseev, Andrei Bykov, and Vyacheslav Ryabtsev — together they became the gang’s first participants. The gang’s leader was Nikolai Tsapok. In 2002 he was shot dead, and his brother Sergei took over the OPG.
The gang engaged in robbery and racketeering, raped girls, and killed farmers and other residents of the stanitsa. Thanks to patrons in the security agencies, OPG members remained free for a long time. That ended in November 2010 after the mass murder at farmer Server Ametov’s home. OPG members burst into his house during a feast, killed the farmer, his wife Galina, his 19-year-old daughter-in-law Yelena, and granddaughter Amira. They also killed the guests: director of the Rostov firm Aston, Vladimir Mironenko, with his wife and two daughters; his father-in-law and mother-in-law; and the Ametovs’ neighbors — Natalya Kasyan and her 14-year-old son Pavel. They placed still-living nine-month-old Amira on the piled bodies and set them on fire. The gang leader Sergei Tsapok and key OPG members received life sentences. Thanks to plea deals, Ryabtsev and Bykov were sentenced to only 20 years in a penal colony.
Valery Bogachev was killed with his son on Sergei Tsapok’s orders.
Seven years earlier, on Sergei Tsapok’s orders, the owner of the largest farm in Kushchyovskaya and his heir were gunned down. Valery Bogachev was considered the richest entrepreneur in the district; he even had helicopters for crop spraying. The triggerman was Andrei Bykov. Valery and his elder son Roman were shot in their car in front of the house — four days before the younger son’s wedding. Afterwards, the family was stripped of all its business.
— He couldn’t not [show up], couldn’t help but take pleasure, — said widow Olga Bogacheva about Sergei Tsapok, recalling the double funeral. — I sat between two coffins. He [Tsapok] laid flowers, but looked at me. And I understood what he wanted to say with his gaze: «Shut your mouth and be quiet». And I shut it, because I had Pavlik, 18; [Roman’s widow] Olya, who had just given birth; [Roman’s son] Yegor — six; and Dania, one month old. And he laid the flowers. But he didn’t even look at them. He looked me in the eyes. With a smirk.
Olga Bogacheva later hid for months, fearing the gang’s continued intimidation.
For six months after the murder, Bogacheva hid with friends in Surgut. The gravestones of her husband and son were repeatedly smashed. Olga is sure OPG members did it.
A 161.RU correspondent spoke with Kuban farmer Eduard Karpenkov. Sergei Tsapok ordered his killing, but they didn’t manage to carry out the order.
Karpenkov owned lands that had been leased to Tsapok’s company for ten years. But Eduard didn’t want his hectares to remain under someone else’s control. Karpenkov founded his own farm and began buying up land.
The gang leader unhesitatingly ordered his subordinate to organize Karpenkov’s murder. But Karpenkov managed to file complaints with the court and the prosecutor’s office. So the gang decided it couldn’t kill him immediately — it would be obvious who stood to gain. Tsapok ordered a meeting to be arranged, and after that a criminal case alleging threats to kill was fabricated against Karpenkov. It ran to six volumes.
Karpenkov sent a letter to the Gosduma, the State Duma. LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky responded. After his intervention, Judge Roman Kusochek issued a ruling to terminate the criminal case due to reconciliation of the parties. Karpenkov tried to challenge the settlement. It was canceled only after the murders at the Ametov home; the prosecutor dropped the charges. Karpenkov was paid 800,000 rubles (about $8,000 at current rates) in state compensation.
Sentenced to life imprisonment, Sergei Tsapok died of a stroke in the Krasnodar pretrial detention center in 2014. In the stanitsa of Kushchyovskaya are buried Anastasia’s grandfather and her uncle — the gang’s founder, Nikolai Tsapok. He was shot in 2002, and Sergei took over the OPG. There is no grave for Sergei in the family plot — he was cremated.
Eduard Karpenkov fought back in court against the gang’s fabricated case.
By 2024, four gang members were still alive. Two of them — Vyacheslav Ryabtsev and Andrei Bykov — left their penal colonies with ChVK Wagner (Private Military Company Wagner Group, PMC Wagner) and received presidential pardons. Lifelong inmate Vladimir Alekseev asked to be allowed to sign a combat contract, but in vain. Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz also continues to serve his sentence. In 2025, Andrei Bykov was killed in Luhansk Oblast.
«It’s that kind of time: it’s dangerous to know things»
…Evening thickens over Nikolaevka. The hole in the house has been covered with plastic sheeting to at least keep in the warmth and protect the home from outsiders. Along Lenin Street and Kutuzovsky Lane, passenger cars race by and buses roll past. The markings of the only pedestrian crossing are painted by the nearest stop.
— There was [a crash] here at the intersection; in the neighboring house someone drove into the fence, — Alexey’s neighbors list the street’s accidents. — Many times they’ve gone off into the ditch. Constantly. The day before this, two cars collided head-on here: one was going straight, the other turning.
There are no traffic lights at the intersection, and drivers decide themselves whom to yield to and whom — not. Cars make U-turns right at the junction of Lenin and Kutuzovsky. Over an hour and a half at the intersection, a 161.RU correspondent observed three situations that miraculously didn’t end in collisions.
Traffic hazards persist at Lenin Street’s intersection with Kutuzovsky Lane in Nikolaevka.
— They’re already saying the man himself is to blame, that he himself stole the Mercedes and forced them to drive into the house, — village resident Yelena relays the local irony. — It’s being pushed in local public groups. [They joke] that the house ran into the car.
Not all of Alexey’s neighbors are ready to talk to the press.
— I don’t know anything and don’t want to know. Not about the gang, not about the daughter, not about the crash, — says Alexey’s neighbor. — Nowadays it’s dangerous to know anything. What if you say something, and then — bam — your house burns down. We don’t need that.
