On 13 April, a court sentenced former senator Dmitry Savelyev to 10 years in a strict-regime penal colony for organising preparations for a murder. Until recently, the United Russia member represented Tula Oblast in the Federation Council.
From VOKhR to Forbes
In the early 1980s, in the then still closed city of Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) — where Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov was living in exile at the time and postgraduate student Boris Nemtsov was writing his dissertation at research institutes — Dmitry Savelyev worked as a paramilitary guard (VOKhR) at the “Dvigatel Revolyutsii” plant. Less than 20 years later, he would head Transneft and become one of the wealthiest State Duma deputies, and a quarter of a century after that, he would be sent to a strict-regime penal colony for attempting to order a murder.
Dmitry Vladimirovich Savelyev was born on 3 August 1968 in the city of Gorky. After school, he took a job as a quality control inspector, then as a VOKhR guard, and volunteered to fight in Afghanistan with the airborne forces.
Unlike many “Afghan veterans”, he did not get lost in the 1990s: he set up and headed the “Savva” trading house in Nizhny Novgorod, and then found his way into Lukoil structures, where he rose quickly, going from branch director to president of the Norsi-Oil oil company. In 1998, Savelyev became head of Transneft, making him the youngest chief executive in the company’s history.
At the same time, Savelyev graduated from Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod and the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation (specialising in Economics and Management) and even earned the academic degree of Candidate of Legal Sciences.
His political career began in 1998 — Savelyev became a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast for the Kstovo district, and as early as 1999, running as an independent, he won the State Duma election in the Sergach single-mandate constituency of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. In the State Duma, Savelyev immediately became deputy chairman of the Committee on Energy, Transport and Communications and joined the Union of Right Forces faction.
In 2001, he took part in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast gubernatorial election, where he came fourth with just over 19% of the vote. In 2003, Savelyev ran in the Novomoskovsk constituency in Tula Oblast for the Rodina party — and won by a narrow margin. Having already become a deputy, he joined the newly created United Russia faction.
After that, Savelyev was elected to the State Duma from the “party of power” until 2016, when he moved to the post of senator, representing the government of Tula Oblast.
During this period, Savelyev led a lifestyle that hundreds of thousands of former “Afghan veterans” could only envy. According to Forbes magazine, Savelyev was among the top 100 wealthiest officials from 2019 to 2021. His family owned a large amount of real estate, including a 489-square-metre mansion in the United Kingdom. According to some reports, Savelyev spent 60 million roubles on his 50th birthday, while Dima Bilan, Ivan Dorn and Svetlana Loboda performed at his wife’s 45th birthday party.
Curator and falsifier of elections
The 2011 State Duma election and the 2012 Russian presidential election were, in the opinion of many observers, the dirtiest in the history of Tula Oblast. While the nationwide average for United Russia at the time was 49% of the vote (and this unrealistic result sparked mass street protests across the country), in Tula Oblast the party list scored a staggering 61%.
Dmitry Savelyev was not just one of the candidates at the time; he was effectively the unofficial curator of the federal elections in the region. As observers recall, with the help of Tula City Duma deputy Oleg Sukhanov, criminal and sports groups (often indistinguishable from one another) were brought in to organise the falsifications. Their representatives “burst into polling stations in large organised groups and stuffed ballot boxes. The police stood idle, and observers were removed from the stations.”
After those elections, deputy Sukhanov became head of the municipal unitary enterprise “Kombinat Spetsobsluzhivanie Naseleniya” (the funeral business), which received municipal contracts. Sukhanov also landed a paid position as deputy mayor (chairman of the city duma).
During Savelyev’s time as a deputy and senator representing Tula Oblast, five governors managed to serve in the region, including the influential Alexei Dyumin, whom many experts once tipped as Putin’s successor. No one wanted to — or could — get rid of the “bratok” Savelyev.
Contract killing
On 2 August 2024, Savelyev was unexpectedly detained right in the Federation Council chamber. Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov personally came to request that the senator’s immunity be lifted because of his involvement in organising a murder. The upper house granted the request.
According to the official version of the investigation, in August 2023 in Moscow, Savelyev ordered the murder of Sergei Ionov, who was serving a sentence in a Kaluga penal colony for embezzling 1.6 million roubles from the company Optomonitoring. Savelyev and Ionov controlled this company together: the former senator owned a stake through his assistant Irina Kudryashova, while Ionov held 50%.
According to Kudryashova, Savelyev allocated Ionov around 50–60 million roubles, but Ionov was unable to set up operations so that the company would start turning a profit. Savelyev demanded that Ionov transfer his share in the firm to him, and then initiated a criminal case against him for embezzling travel allowances. Ionov did not quietly “do his time” but began publicly accusing Savelyev of unlawful dismissal and illegal business activities. He sent complaints to the Federation Council, the Investigative Committee, the Presidential Administration and the governor of Tula Oblast.
Unaccustomed to such treatment, the senator decided to kill Ionov for this, the prosecution believes. This intent took shape by the end of the summer of 2023.
To organise the murder, Savelyev turned to another veteran of the combat operations in Afghanistan, Yuri Nefyodov. Nefyodov approached his repeatedly convicted relative named Dyukov (nicknamed “Dyuk”) and offered him the task of finding someone willing to commit the murder for 50,000 dollars. Nefyodov intended to keep half of the money for himself without informing Savelyev. Dyukov was also paid an advance of 5,000 dollars. On 30 August 2023, Dyukov met in Moscow with former Federal Penitentiary Service operative Pestunov and asked him to find people who could kill Ionov right inside the Kaluga penal colony.
Pestunov agreed for appearances’ sake, but after the meeting he contacted law enforcement agencies to report the murder plot. Law enforcement officers devised an operational experiment — a staged murder of Ionov. Pestunov met directly with Nefyodov in Moscow after Dyukov had been detained on a different criminal case, and reported that he had carried out the order. As confirmation, he handed over photographs, ambulance call-out cards and a medical protocol establishing the fact of Ionov’s death. Nefyodov received 100,000 dollars from Savelyev’s assistant, and the senator was sent photos of the forged documents.
End of the combat path
Nefyodov was detained on 19 March 2024 in Moscow while handing over 45,000 dollars to Pestunov. Also in March, operatives detained the intermediary Dyukov. They were charged with incitement to murder and aiding and abetting preparations for this crime, committed by a group of persons. All the participants except Savelyev pleaded guilty. Savelyev called the prosecution unfounded and the facts against him fabricated.
In March 2026, a jury panel unanimously returned a guilty verdict against Savelyev in the attempted murder case.
On 13 April, the court sentenced Dmitry Savelyev to 10 years of strict regime for organising preparations for a murder. Nefyodov was sentenced to four years of deprivation of liberty, and Dyukov to eight.