It started with the strengthening of personal safety measures by leaders of both groups. And these safety measures proved justified, at least for the commanding body of the Neverov group. In the summer of 2001 the Togliatti wardens of order simultaneously averted four murders for hire. The entire top of the Neverov group was to become killers’ victims. The potential victims included Sergey Neverov, Mikhail Zujkov, Aleksandr Petrovsky, and Aleksandr Volkov. The case materials identify none other than Igor Sirotenko as the person who ordered the crime. Investigators believe that Sirota was preparing to eliminate the leaders of the Neverov team as follows.

Immediately after Miron Mokrov was murdered, most of his subordinates offered their services to Igor Sirotenko. The offer included not only services, but also the companies Mironov used to control. However, as we have already said, Sergey Neverov’s subordinates also claimed the “Mironov” property, since they believed, and not without a reason, that “the winner gets everything.”

In order to resolve the growing contradictions, Sirota suggested that the “defectors” prove their ability to act. And they had to do it by physically eliminating the top men in charge of Neverov’s organized criminal group.

Former Mironov lieutenants Rozov and Ziuzin became the organizers of the elimination, and Korostylyov, who formerly served in the army’s special forces and was decorated with a combat order for carrying out a number of special operations in “hot zones,” took it upon himself to actually carry out the elimination. He set up physical surveillance over the potential victims and had their residential addresses and personal vehicles identified. The order itself was to be carried out by Lipatov, Kamanin, and Prokayev, members of the Sirotenko gang and the fallen-apart gang of Mironov.

The killers found out that Neverov and his deputy Petrovsky moved around in an armored car and had acquired three grenade launchers in addition to regular firearms, apparently with the intent to duplicate in the streets of Togliatti the experiment of the terrorists who had used an RPG grenade launcher to destroy the limousine of Georgia’s President Shevardnadze.

The gangsters took care of their own safety, as well. For the purposes of this operation they purchased an UAZ minivan and lined it from inside with steel plates, thus turning it into a small fortress on wheels.

The hunt for the leaders of the competing group continued through the entire summer of 2001, but the killers were plagued by bad luck. Sometimes the Neverov bosses would change their places of residence (each of them had a few “unofficial” apartments), at other times unauthorized persons would get in the way, or the killers themselves would disagree about something. But the most glorious event in the activities of the simpleton killers was their detention by the police. They were apprehended right in their armored vehicle, along with their weapons, masks, wigs, and other paraphernalia. As a matter of fact, they were arrested not far from where the entire leadership of the Neverov organized criminal group was assembled for a meeting. As of today, there are a few versions explaining how the police learned about the “act of terror” in advance.

Did Anyone Order the Murder? Perhaps No One Did?

The Neverov group sticks to the version in which the killers were betrayed by their very comrades. Sirota, they are saying, had waited a few months for his orders to be carried out. But one failure followed another, and eventually the criminal boss got mad. He sensed that the lack of brain displayed by former comrades-in-arms of Mironov could bring the operation to a total failure and lead the law enforcement people to him. So he ordered a liquidation of the inept organizers of the crime. As a result, Ziuzin was shot and the second organizer of the attempt on the Neverov bosses, Aleksey Rozov, became the object of a hunt. When Rozov learned about this, he got very scared and could not think of anything better than to turn himself in to the prosecutor’s office and “sell out” on Sirota, his comrade-in-arms, and his former subordinates. As a result, the killers were detained at the crime scene, while Sirota himself and his subordinates Prokayev and Vorobyov were put on the wanted list. As for Rozov, who confessed, the law enforcement people let him go free.

After this he disappeared. The Neverov gang maintains that the mysterious disappearance of the main witness is Sirota’s handiwork, and that should Rozov ever be found, it will be as a corpse.

There is, however, a different version of how the killers ended up in the hands of justice. According to this version, Rozov’s visit to the prosecutor’s office can hardly be called voluntary. The explanation being that the Neverov gang’s counterintelligence may have done a good job and its leaders learned about the elimination operation being prepared against them. The information was then leaked via some friendly policemen to the wardens of order.

The latter detained the organizers and the killers, worked with them, obtained confessing testimony from Rozov and then let him go free. After which “the snitch” preferred to disappear from town. This version is indirectly supported by a statement of city prosecutor Evgeny Novozhilov, made in one of his recent interviews. He stated that the criminal situation in the city is under control, and recently “one organized criminal group asked for protection against another.” By all appearances he meant the Neverov group.

But there is also a third version of events which the leadership of Sirotenko’s group is holding. They believe that the entire case is fabricated and that Igor Sirotenko learned from hearsay that he “had ordered Neverov killed.” Plus, the persons called “organizers” and “actual doers” of the crime by the investigators have never been members of his group or had anything to do with it. The case was most probably concocted by the wardens of order themselves towards the same old purpose: to take Sirotenko’s commercial organizations away from him. The “red roof” is simply stepping up the pressure and is looking for new opportunities to do so. Meanwhile, the Neverov group in this situation has neither been victimized by Sirota nor ordered a criminal case. The Neverov gang simply agreed to help the big police bosses make their commercial ambitions come true.